I! 


* 


(DUNTKY 
HOUSE 


v 


<Ey~  RICHARD 
LE.  GALLIB1N1NE 


f^yu^v 


2 

Jl    A  ILLUSTRATED 

r  by 

ELIZABETH  SHIPPEN  GREEN 


HARPER    (SL    BROTHERS 

PUBLISHERS 
NEW    YORK    AND    LONDON       1902 


6U 


Copyright,  1902,  by  Harper  &  Brothers. 

All  rights  reserved. 
Published  November,  1902. 


Kcvre  lille  danske  Moder— 
husk  Din  Sine  venter  altid 
paa  Dig  i  det  gamle  Hus  ! 


The  Old  Manor,  Chiddiugfold 
1 8,  September,  1902 


CONTENTS 

0 


PAGE 


AN  OLD  COUNTRY  HOUSE 3 

OUR  TREE-TOP  LIBRARY 2^ 

THE  JOY  OF  GARDENS 1 '  45 

PERDITA'S  LOVERS ^9 

PERDITA'S   SIMPLE   CUPBOARD 85- 

OF  A  VIOLET  IN  AN  OLD  BOOK m 

PERDITA'S  CHRISTMAS 131 


An  Old  Country  House 


i 

PERHAPS,  dear  reader— if  you  will  excuse  so  old-fashioned 
a  manner  of  address,  not  inappropriate  in  the  connection 
— perhaps  it  has  not  happened  to  be  one  of  your  dreams  to 
live  in  an  old  house.  Perdita  and  I,  however,  almost  as  soon 
as  we  dreamed  of  keeping  a  house  together  at  all,  had  agreed 
that,  if  possible,  it  must  be  an  old  house.  Of  course,  to  live 
together  was  the  main  thing,  though  we  could  afford  no  higher 
rent  than  that  of  a  hollow  tree  in  the  forest ;  but  to  live  to- 
gether in  an  old  house  would  be  best.  It  was  a  dream  that  had 
to  wait.  Waiting  is  said  to  be  good  for  dreams.  Meanwhile 
we  did  not  live  in  a  tree  in  the  forest,  but  in  a  little  red  brick 
box,  one  of  a  neat  row  of  suburban  cottages  facing  a  bit  of  old 
woodland  which  still  defied  the  steadily  encroaching  town. 
Things  had  prospered  with  us  the  year  or  two  in  the  little  red 


AN    OLD    COUNTRY   HOUSE 

brick  box,  and  the  dream  of  the  old  house  came  back.  An  old 
house  with  an  old  garden — cut  trees,  a  lawn  of  green  velvet, 
and  a  sun-dial.  Already  I  knew  that  Perdita  saw  herself  on 
that  lawn  in  the  spring  sunshine,  leading  a  flower  by  the  hand, 
with  the  sun-dial  and  two  white  peacocks  against  the  well- 
clipped  yews. 

"  We  must  have  espalier  roses,"  said  Perdita. 

"  Certainly,"  I  said. 

"  La  France,  Anna  Olivier,  Gloire  de  Dijon,  Etoile  de  Lyon, 
and,  of  course,  Marecbal  Niel,"  said  Perdita,  dreamily. 

"  It  will  be  like  growing  beautiful  words,"  said  I — "  pub- 
lishing little  books  of  rose  leaves." 

"And  we  must  have  old  brick  walls,  with  peaches  and 
nectarines  ripening  in  the  sun." 

"And  pear-trees,"  I  said,  "in  a  trim  attitude  of  crucifixion." 

"  We  shall  have  to  look  after  the  wasps  and  earwigs,"  said 
Perdita;   "they. are  terrible  with  the  peaches."  .  .  . 

"  We  must  have  nets,"  I  said,  vaguely. 

"  To  keep  off  the  birds,  you  mean — yes  1  We  must  have 
nets  for  the  strawberries." 

"Will  it  be  necessary  to  protect  the  asparagus?"  I  asked. 

And  then  we  both  laughed,  for  our  dream  had  not  yet 
advanced  even  as  far  as  a  single  earwig.  We  had  not  even 
consulted  a  house-agent. 

It  was  a  bright  morning. 

"  Take  your  bicycle,"  said  Perdita,  "  set  up  a  stick,  and  ride 
in  the  direction  it  falls — till—" 

"Till  I  come  to  the  asparagus." 

"  But,  whatever  you  do,  don't  forget  the  sun-dial,"  cried 
Perdita,  as  I  sped  away  in  the  green  direction  of  Surrey. 

Now,  though  of  course  Perdita  and  I  knew  nothing  about 

4 


AN   OLD    COUNTRY   HOUSE 

it,  it  had  happened  that,  about  a  month  before,  in  the  very 
house  Perdita  was  dreaming  of,  an  old  bachelor  gentleman 
had  died.  He  was  a  great  Shakespearian  scholar,  we  after- 
wards learned  from  one  of  the  church-wardens,  and  somehow 
we  got  to  think  of  him  as  a  sort  of  Edward  Fitz-Gerald.  A 
bookish,  smoky  old  man,  fond  of  stopping  and  talking  to 
children,  we  decided  him  to  have  been.  He  had  lived  in  the 
old  house  for  nearly  thirty  years,  had  sat  with  his  pipe  look- 
ing out  upon  this  village  green  before  either  of  us  had  been 
born.  We  have  always  felt  a  sort  of  gratitude  to  him  for 
keeping  the  house  for  us  so  long.  If  he  had  died  even  a 
few  months  earlier — as  an  old  tired  man  might  have  been 
forgiven  doing,  for  he  was  up  on  eighty,  as  you  can  read  in 
the  church-yard — we  should  certainly  have  missed  it.  And 
now  that  we  really  live  in  it,  and  Perdita  has  her  nurseries 
and  white  peacocks,  and  we  set  our  clocks  by  a  sun-dial, 
we  sometimes  catch  our  breath  as  we  think  how  terribly 
near  we  came  to  losing  it.  Only  yesterday  Perdita  gave  a 
little  shudder,  and  laughed  as  I  asked  the  reason. 

"You  never  will  guess,"  she  replied,  "but  I  just  thought 
of  that  fat  man  who  walked  in  front  of  us  from  the  station 
the  first  day  we  came  to  look  over  the  house,  and  who  we 
were  sure  was  walking  straight  to  take  it  before  we  did. 
Do  you  remember  ?" 

Indeed  I  did,  for  I  never  felt  so  sure  of  anything.  He 
was  the  only  passenger  except  ourselves  by  the  train,  and 
he  walked  eagerly,  just  as  people  do  when  they  are  going 
to  look  over  a  house  they  dread  some  one  else  is  going  to  take. 
He  looked  prosperous  too— a  man  who  would  keep  horses, 
we  said— a  man  who  would  outbid  us,  give  the  landlord  twice 
the  rent  he  asked  just  to  get  the  place  .  .  .  (rich  men  always 

$ 


AN   OLD   COUNTRY   HOUSE 


r 

J|pl 

'*  #*:       fjOQfl&J 

do  this).  Therefore  you  can  imagine  our  relief  when  he 
turned  off  sharp  to  the  left  half  a  mile  from  our  village.  So 
far  we  were  safe.  There  was  no  other  enemy  in  sight, 
though  we  almost  dreaded  to  set  eyes  on  the  dream-house, 
lest  the  "  To  Let "  notice  should  be  missing  from  the  win- 
dows, and  a  busy  stir  of  painters  and  paper-hangers  in  the 
old  rooms. 

But  no !  We  were  safe  as  yet,  though  we  had  many 
tremors  to  go  through  before  the  old  house  really  became 
ours.  Of  course,  like  people  of  the  world,  we  offered  the 
landlord  less  than  he  asked,  and  were  sorry  next  day,  when 
the  agent  told  us  how  two  colonels  and  one  general  were 
already  after  it,  men  who  were  willing  to  spend  quite  large 
sums  on  the  place.  Finally  1  signed  the  agreement  with  a 
hurrah,  and  the  two  colonels  and  the  general  shivered  house- 
less in  our  imaginations.  We  felt  quite  sorry  for  their  dis- 
appointment. 


II 


We  are  sometimes  asked  if  we  don't  fear  ghosts.    Perdita 
once  made  a  charming  answer. 

"  Of  course,"  she  said,  "  if  it  were  some  terrible  ghost 

6 


AN   OLD    COUNTRY   HOUSE 

with  its  head  underneath  its  arm,  I  should  be  frightened ; 
but  if  one  day  I  were  to  meet  some  wistful  poor  shadow  on 
the  staircase,  some  wandering,  unhappy  soul,  I  should  only 
be  sorry  for  it,  sorry  to  have  intruded  on  its  reverie." 

And  I  am  sure  Perdita  spoke  the  truth. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  an  old  house  would  hardly  be  worth 
taking  without  its  ghosts.  Not,  of  course,  dreadful,  visible 
ghosts  such  as  Perdita  spoke  of,  but  those  memories,  or  rather 
suggestions  of  memories,  those  hints  of  long-abandoned  habits, 
those  marks  of  masterful  characteristics  no  longer  heeded, 
which  a  sympathetic  imagination  piously  materializes. 

The  nearest  we  have  as  yet  come  to  a  ghost  apprehensible 
by  the  senses,  was  a  ghost  that  appeared,  so  to  say,  to  our 
noses — the  ghost  of  an  old  man's  tobacco.  It  met  us  almost 
as  soon  as  we  entered  the  house  on  our  first  visit.  It  was 
unmistakably  present  in  the  room  to  the  left  of  the  hall, 
which  has  now  been  transformed  into  Perdita's  boudoir.  It 
disappeared  with  the  dainty  new  paint  and  the  Perdita  wall- 
paper, and  though  I  have  since  sat  alone  in  the  room  for 
hours  at  a  time,  I  have  observed  no  trace  of  it.  A  jar  of 
Japanese  pot-pourri  seems  to  have  overpowered  it  forever. 

For  this  I  confess  I  am  sorry.  For  what  more  pathetic 
ghost  than  an  old  man's  tobacco !     I  wish   now  that  I  had 


AN    OLD    COUNTRY   HOUSE 

chosen  the  room  for  my  study,  for  then  it  need  not  have 
been  banished,  but  might  have  mingled,  indeed,  with  con- 
genial company.  Perdita's  cigarette  smoke  is  hardly  so  potent 
as  her  presence,  and  there  can  be  little  doubt  but  that  that 
old  ghost  would  strongly  disapprove  of  Perdita's  smoking 
at  all. 

Yes!  I  think  we  might  have  done  so  much  for  our  old 
predecessor  —  allowed  lodging,  so  long  as  it  cared  to  stay, 
literally  for  his  kindly  old  breath  in  one  of  our  rooms.  We 
have  more  rooms  than  enough  for  ourselves.  In  fact,  there 
are  several  we  do  not  use  at  all.  Unfortunately  these  seem 
to  have  been  unoccupied  by  him  too.  Evidently  his  fancy 
was  for  that  front  room  looking  out  across  the  green.  There 
it  was  that  he  was  still  unmistakably  present  the  day  we 
invaded  his  peace  with  our  noisy  future-running  feet.  And 
now  it  is  no  use  asking  him  to  come  back — though,  I  assure 
him,  should  he  chance  to  read  this,  that  if  he  will  give  us 
fair  warning,  so  that  our  first  introduction  to  each  other  need 
not  be  of  too  startling  a  nature,  nothing  would  make  us  hap- 
pier than  to  make  his  old  room  ready  for  him  at  any  hour 
of  the  day  or  night,  as  near  like  its  old  self  as  we  can  guess 
it.  Only  let  him  convey  us  some  message  that  he  will  accept 
our  invitation.  We  might  leave  a  Shakespeare  closed  on  the 
table,  and  if  on  our  next  entering  the  room  we  found  it  open 
at,  say — a  passage  which  I'm  sure  the  old  man  loved — the 
lines  about  Perdita's  flowers  in  the  "Winter's  Tale,"  we 
would  prepare  ourselves  to  receive  him,  have  a  jar  as  near  as 
we  could  guess  of  his  favorite  tobacco,  and  a  church-warden, 
all  in  readiness  for  him. 

Kindly  old  man,  come  back  if  you  will  to  your  old  room. 
We  would  not  drive  you  away  with  the  sound  of  our  young 

8 


AN   OLD   COUNTRY   HOUSE 


voices.  There  is  room  enough  in  the  old  house  for  all  of 
us.  You  who  loved  young  voices  love  ours,  bless  our  little 
children,  and  you  shall  find  us  tender  to  your  old  dreams! 
But  if  "  Old  Fitz,"  as  we  call  him,  has  not  appeared  to  us 
since  the  day  his  tobacco  smoke  was  cruelly  driven  from  its 
hiding-place  in  his  old  and,  it  must  be  said  in  all  reverence, 
hideous  wall-paper,  we  have  frequent  indications  that  he  is 
as  yet  far  from  having  given  up  possession  of  our  old  house, 
though  he  smokes  in  it  no  more.  There  are  many  of  our 
neighbors  who,  it  is  evident,  plainly  see  him  still  sitting  at 
his  window  and  moving  about  our  rooms.  This  is  partic- 
ularly true  of  a  charming  middle-aged  Jady  who  is  our  next- 
door  neighbor.  She  also  has  looked  on  the  village  green  for 
nearly  thirty  years ;  and  for  all  that  time  our  old  ghost  was 
one  of  her  dearest  friends.     Can  you  wonder  that  it  is  we 


AN   OLD   COUNTRY   HOUSE 

who  seem  the  ghosts  to  her,  and  that  when  she  comes  to 
take  tea  with  us  she  seems  hardly  to  see  us,  to  be,  in  fact, 
looking  through  and  beyond  us — at  the  kind  old  friend  who 
is  gone,  and  is  still  there  ? 

Though  as  yet  he  is  far  from  completely  created  in  our 
imaginations  —  and  we  hope  to  know  him  much  more  inti- 
mately through  traditional  hint  and  glimpse  —  he  is  still  real 
to  us  beyond  all  the  other  ghosts  who  have  left  marks  of 
themselves,  dim  or  more  or  less  clear,  upon  our  old  house, 
and  to  whom  we  owe  so  much  for  its  beauty  and  comfort. 
Of  these  there  are  several  of  whom  we  desire  some  infor- 
mation.    We  would,  indeed,  particularly  like  to  meet: 

i.  The  three  ghosts  who  in  August  of  the  year  1762  carved 
their  names  unostentatiously  —  quite  obscurely,  in  fact  —  on 
three  of  the  red  bricks  built  in  the  side  of  the  Georgian  part 
of  the  house.  Their  names  are  Coates,  Diddlesfold,  Chalcroft. 
We  surmise  them  to  have  been  three  friends  whose  fancy 
it  was,  while  the  new  house  was  building,  to  take  each  an 
unset  brick,  write  his  name  on  it,  and  then  get  the  bricklayer 
to  set  the  three  bricks  in  the  building  as  a  memorial  that  in 
August,  1762,  Coates,  Diddlesfold,  and  Chalcroft  were  good 
friends  and  glad  to  be  alive.  If  that  surmise  is  correct,  the 
present  occupiers  of  the  house  are  just  the  people  to  appre- 
ciate the  fancy.  We  desire,  therefore,  further  acquaintance 
with  these  three  ghosts. 

2.  The  ghost  who  laid  out  the  garden,  and  every  ghost 
who  contributed  to  its  present  charm ;  the  ghost  who  thought 
of  the  sun-dial ;  and  the  ghost  who  planted  the  cut  yews. 

3.  The  ghost  who  sings  Lillibullero  in  the  low -roofed 
dining-room  at  three  in  the  morning.  Perdita  has  not  yet 
heard  him. 

10 


AN   OLD   COUNTRY   HOUSE 

4.  The  particular  ghost  who  was  so  fond  of  roses. 

J,  The  ghost  that  makes  a  noise  like  soft  snow  against 
the  window  on  February  nights. 

6.  The  ghosts  of  the  little  children  who  lived  in  the  nursery 
in  Elizabeth's  time ;  and  the  nearer  ghost  of  a  very  little  girl, 
aged  between  one  and  three,  who  once  sat  on  my  knee,  but 
is  now  quite  a  grown-up  lady  and  goes  to  boarding-school. 

Yes!  our  old  house  is  full  of  ghosts.  But  no! — we  are 
not  in  the  least  afraid. 

Ill 

Perhaps  one  of  the  greatest  charms  of  an  old  house  is 
the  number  of  superseded  contrivances  which  it  contains, 
naive  engines  of  the  antique  domestic  economy  long  since 
improved  upon,  the  apparatus  of  methods  no  longer  a  part  of 
the  living  science  of  existence. 

That  powdered  wigs  are  no  longer  common,  are,  in  fact, 
seldom  worn  nowadays,  by  no  means  subtracts  from  our  de- 
light in  the  powdering  closet  attached  to  Perdita's  bedroom, 
with  the  hole  in  the  door  through  which  the  fine  lady  or 
gentleman  meekly  placed  her  or  his  head  as  on  a  block,  so 
that  the  great  puffs  should  not  shower  their  whiteness  over 
the  whole  exquisite  figure.  I  am  sure  we  are  far  happier  in 
it  than  if  we  actually  put  it  to  its  proper  use. 

In  Perdita's  room,  as  in  two  other  bedrooms,  there  is  an- 
other device  of  the  use  of  which  we  were  ignorant  till  a 
young  eighteenth  -  century  friend  of  ours  explained  it  to  us. 
It  is  a  curious  brass  arrangement  attached  to  door  and  door- 
post, by  which  you  were  able  to  fasten  your  door  at  night 
and  unfasten  it  in  the  morning  without  leaving  your  bed.    Un- 

11 


AN   OLD    COUNTRY   HOUSE 


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like  a  certain  popular  author, 
I  am  not  good  at  describing 
machinery.  So  I  will  satisfy 
myself  by  saying  that  the 
main  feature  of  the  contriv- 
ance is  a  brass  bolt,  fast- 
ened high  on  the  door-post 
and  working  perpendicularly. 
To  this  was  attached  a  long 
cord  which  was  carried  round 
the  ceiling  by  an  arrangement 
of  rings  till  it  reached  the  bed- 
side. By  pulling  the  cord  you 
raised  the  bolt,  and  thus  re- 
leased a  little  movable  brass 
catch  attached  to  the  door, 
which  catch,  before  going  to 
bed,  you  had  placed  in  posi- 
tion between  the  door  -  post 
and  the  fallen  bolt. 

I  can  give  you  no  idea  of 
the  pleasure  this  little  engine 
has  given  us.     It  is  now  in 


<a  ^  •■  * 


>?* 


12 


AN    OLD    COUNTRY    HOUSE 


ancient  working  order,  and  we 
bolt  our  door  at  night  just  for 
the  pleasure  of  unbolting  it  in 
the  morning  in  the  way  they 
unbolted  it  a  hundred  years 
ago.  This,  you  may  observe, 
is  childish;  but  a  certain  child- 
ishness is  of  the  essence  of 
enjoying  an  old  house.  That 
enjoyment,  more  than  most  of 
our  pleasures,  is  largely  one 
of  the  imagination.  It  is  a 
kind  of  intellectual  play-acting, 
a  running  accompaniment  of 
make-believe,  which  must  not 
be  allowed,  of  course,  to  become 
obtrusively  dramatic.  One  lives 
in  an  old  house  to  live  one's 
own  life,  after  all — not  serious- 
ly to  ape  the  life  of  its  former 
inhabitants.  But  that  life  is 
lived,  so  to  say,  in  the  atmos- 
phere of  a  strange  old  perfume, 


V 


I 


M 


AN    OLD    COUNTRY   HOUSE 

to  a  faint  music  of  old  violins.  It  is  the  modern  uselessness 
of  those  various  naive  contrivances  of  which  I  have  spoken 
which  is  no  small  part  of  their  charm.  They  have  ceased  to 
be  useful — and  so  are  become  beautiful. 

To  understand  the  full  truth  of  this  axiom,  you  must  visit 
the  kitchen  quarters.  These  form  a  veritable  museum  of  the 
culinary  art.  It  is  a  museum  from  which  I  am  debarred  during 
the  day,  for  obvious  reasons ;  but  sometimes  at  midnight, 
unseen  save  by  the  cat  and  the  black  beetles,  I  take  a  candle 
and  explore  its  Egyptian  silence.  I  am  never  tired  of  looking 
at  the  old  spit  with  all  its  wonderful  clock-work.  Following 
the  stout  string  that  runs  from  it  through  the  wall,  I  come  to 
the  little  cupboard  of  clock-weights  that  work  it.  I  open  the 
door  each  time  with  new  wonder.  Strange  that  an  ancient 
method  of  roasting  beef  should  seem  so  romantic.  It  is  the 
astrology  of  cookery.  Hard  by  is  an  ancient  apparatus  for 
brewing  beer.  How  I  dote  on  the  old  copper  boiler,  inspect 
the  various  taps,  raise  the  copper  lids!  The  whole  thing 
affects  me  like  the  word  "  home-brew " — "  tasting  of  Flora 
and  the  country  green."  But  we  do  not  brew  our  own  beer, 
all  the  same. 

That  reminds  me  of  the  cellars  —  wonderful  catacombs 
which  once  more  illustrate  that  charm  in  uselessness  which 
belongs  to  an  old  house.  I  stand  among  the  whitewashed 
wine-bins  as  I  might  stand  among  the  ruins  of  Thebes.  I  call 
up  old  vintages  as  one  might  recall  the  names  of  old  dynasties. 
Ah !  what  illustrious  lines  of  the  royal  grape  have  made  their 
successive  dwelling-place  where — Ohl  abominable! — we  now 
house  our  coal.  Names  of  vintages  of  wine  rise  before  me, 
splendid  as  the  names  of  old  kings,  and  famous  dates  em- 
blazon the  cobwebbed  dark.    Ah  me! — not  one  bottle  left  of 


AN    OLD    COUNTRY   HOUSE 

all  that  ancient  glory.  Sometimes  I  dream  that  on  one  of 
my  midnight  explorations  I  shall  come  upon  a  secret  door, 
and,  by  the  lucky  working  of  a  spring,  find  myself  standing 
before  a  hidden  treasure  of  old  wine.  Meanwhile  we  cannot 
think  of  mocking  those  underground  palaces  of  the  grape  with 
our  modest  store  of  claret  and  whiskey — for  which  a  humble 
cupboard  gives   ample  room. 


IV 


However,  if  we  do  not  make  its  proper  use  of  the  spit — 
that  astrolabe  of  the  kitchen — or  brew  our  own  beer,  at  least 
we  make  our  own  time  of  day.  So  long  as  the  sun  shines 
we  are  independent  of  the  village  clock  or  our  own  watches — 
which  is  fortunate,  as  those  new-fangled  time-pieces  seldom 
agree.  We  take  our  time  fresh  from  the  maker.  No  mech- 
anism intervenes  for  us  between  the  birth  of  time  and  its 
registration.  For  us  time  is  born  and  registered  at  the  same 
moment.  The  sun  has  no  sooner  made  a  minute  than  it  is 
ours,  and  we  can  watch  him  making  the  next.  It  is  not,  I 
understand  from  learned  authority,  unimpeachable  Greenwich 
time— except  on  four  days  in  the  year.  These  four  days  are 
April  i  £,  June  i£,  September  i,  and  December  24.  On  these 
days  you  may  rely  on  catching  your  train  by  sun-dial.  Dur- 
ing a  few  days  of  November,  however,  it  is  apt  to  make  you 
miss  it,  by — not  more  than — sixteen  minutes.  You  will  hardly 
miss  your  train  by  so  much.  Sixteen  minutes  is  the  maximum. 
You  may  only  miss  it  by  ten. 

The  fault — if  fault  it  can  be  called — is,  of  course,  with  the 
sun,  not  with  the  dial.     As  every  encyclopaedia  knows,  the 


AN   OLD   COUNTRY    HOUSE 


sun,  compared  with  the  stars, 
is  something  of  an  idler.  He 
takes  an  average  of  some  four 
minutes  a  day  longer  than  the 
stars  to  his  daily  round.  The 
stars  may  be  relied  on  to  a 
second.  But  while,  in  a  sense, 
the  sun  is  equally  punctual, 
his  is  that  subtle  punctuality 
which  has  the  appearance  of 
unpunctuality.  So  to  say,  he 
is  always  punctually  late.  This 
is  one  of  those  conditions  of 
being  a  dial — instead  of  a  sun 
—  of  which  it  is  useless  for 
the  most  beautiful  bright-faced 
dial  to  complain.  And,  after 
all,  an  average  unpunctuality 
of  four  minutes  a  day  is  noth- 
ing to  make  a  fuss  about, — 
there  is  something  endearing- 
ly human  about  it, — whereas 
that  cold  punctuality  of  the 
stars  perhaps  accounts  for 
our  feeling  them  so  unsym- 
pathetic to  our  warm  mor- 
tality. All  really  human  be- 
ings miss  trains.  And,  if 
this  axiom  be  conceded,  the 
sun  -  dial  is  thus  seen  to 
be  a  friend  to  human  nature. 


16 


AN   OLD   COUNTRY    HOUSE 

Not  Greenwich  time,  but  garden  time.  The  time  made  by 
sun-dial  is  time  as  superior  to  that  made  by  city  clock  as  milk 
fresh  from  the  cow  is  superior  to  milk  fresh  from  the  can. 
Each  minute  of  it  is  superior  to  a  town  minute  as  a  new-laid 
egg  is  superior  to  a  town-laid  egg!  It  is,  so  to  speak,  real, 
unadulterated  time,  time  running  pure  as  the  running  brook, 
and  possibly  purer — time  which  tastes  of  wild  flowers,  like 
honey  in  the  mouth,  time  whose  hours  and  quarters  are 
chimed  by  birds,  and  whose  minutes  are  ticked  by  grass- 
hoppers ; 

So  many  hours  must  I  tend  my  flock  ; 
So  many  hours  must  I  take  my  rest  ; 
So  many  hours  must  I  contemplate  ; 
So  many  hours  must  I  sport  myself. 

So  is  the  good  time  of  the  dial  well  spent;  or  say  thus; 

So  many  hours  must  I  read  my  book  ; 
So  many  hours  must  I  smoke  my  pipe  ; 
So  many  hours  must  I  walk  abroad  ; 
So  many  hours  with  my  children  play  ; 
So  many  hours  with  their  mother  talk. 

It  is  the  natural  clock  by  which  to  do  the  beautiful  work 
of  idleness ;  the  clock,  as  Lamb  beautifully  said,  "  appropriate 
for  sweet  plants  and  flowers  to  spring  by,  for  the  birds  to 
apportion  their  silver  warblings  by,  for  flocks  to  pasture  and 
be  led  to  fold  by."  As  that  motto  which  took  Hazlitt's  fancy 
on  a  sun-dial  near  Venice  declares — Moras  non  numero  nisi 
serenas— -it  only  counts  the  sunny  hours.  And  these  it  counts 
with  a  gentleness  that  makes  one  forgive  the  inevitable  record. 
It  is  not,  like  the  clock,  a  Cassandra  crying  aloud  of  the  swift- 
coming  end,  interrupting  our  happiest  hours  with  grim  re- 

17 


AN   OLD   COUNTRY    HOUSE 

minders  that  they  are  surely  passing.  It  is  only  too  glad  that 
we  should  forget ;  and  sometimes,  with  the  connivance  of  a 
friendly  cloud,  it  affects  that  time  is  not  passing  at  all,  or  at 
least  mercifully  refuses  to  tell  us  that  we  have  already  out- 
stayed our  appointed  hour  in  the  sun.  This  friendly  charac- 
teristic of  sun  -  dials  is  sometimes  frustrated  by  mournful 
people  who  will  insist  on  the  memento  mori,  and  inscribe  the 
kindly  dial  with  lugubrious  reminders  of  our  mortal  state. 
Sun-dials  should  have  cheerful  mottoes.  Here  is  one  I  made 
for  Perdita's : 

Shadow  and  sun — so  too  our  lives  are  made — 

Yet  think  how  great  the  sun,  how  small  the  shade  ! 

The  optimism  here  is,  I  fear,  somewhat  too  sententious.  Yet 
better  be  sententiously  cheerful  than  sententious  after  the 
manner  of  a  death's-head.  Here  is  a  homely  rebuke  of  such 
worm-ponderers : 

Sic  transit,  sayst  thou  ?    Well,  then,  let  it  pass  ! 

Wouldst  be  a  glutton  at  the  feast  of  life, 
And  eat  and  eat,  and  ever  fill  thy  glass  ? 

Well-fed,  Content  lays  down  his  fork  and  knife. 

Were  one  careful  to  celebrate  sun-dials  after  the  manner 
of  Izaak  Walton,  one  might  proudly  produce  august  spiritual 
authority  in  their  favor ;  and  I  confess  that  I  never  look  at 
our  sun-dial  without  thinking  of  the  good  king  Hezekiah, 
whose  life  was  prolonged  by  the  Divine  consent,  apparently 
for  the  sole  but  excellent  reason  that  he  loved  it:  "O  Lord, 
by  these  things  men  live,  and  in  all  these  things  is  the  life  of  my 
spirit."  So  cried  the  King  of  Judah  in  deadly  fear  that  his 
hour  had  come,  and  that  he  should  "behold  man  no  more 

18 


AN    OLD   COUNTRY    HOUSE 


with  the  inhabitants  of  the 
world."  Perhaps  there  is  no 
more  human  cry  in  the  whole 
of  literature ;  and  so  great 
was  the  humanity  of  it  that 
God,  at  the  intercession  of  His 
prophet  Isaiah,  took  pity  upon 
the  king  who  loved  His  world 
so  well,  and  granted  him  a 
reprieve  of  fifteen  years.  Fif- 
teen years !  It  must  have 
sounded  like  eternal  youth. 

Fifteen  years  more  of 
springs  and  summers — meas- 
ured (and  this  is  the  point)  by 
"the  sun-dial  of  Ahaz."  For, 
said  the  prophet :  "  This  shall 
be  a  sign  unto  thee  from  the 
Lord,  that  the  Lord  will  do  this 
thing  that  He  hath  spoken : 
Behold,  I  will  bring  again  the 
shadow  of  the  degrees,  which 
is  gone  down  in  the  sun-dial 
of  Ahaz,  ten  degrees  back- 
ward." "So,"  we  read  on, 
"the  sun  returned  ten  degrees, 
by  which  degrees  it  was  gone 
down." 

This,  it  is  said,  is  the  most 
ancient  reference  to  sun-dials 
in  literature,  and  it  is  curious, 


19 


AN    OLD   COUNTRY   HOUSE 

therefore,  to  note  that  on  this,  the  first  recorded  occasion  of 
its  use,  that  should  be  seen  to  happen  which  has  so  often 
been  declared  impossible  since — that  the  hand  should  be  seen 
going  back  upon  the  dial  1  Ah  1  to  be  Hezekiah,  King  of  Ju- 
dah — with  fifteen  new,  unexpected  years  to  spend !  "  O  God, 
put  back  Thy  universe,  and  give  me  yesterday!"— as  the  hero 
of  a  famous  melodrama  cries  in  a  moment  of  agony.  No! 
Says  the  memento  mod: 

Soon  shall  the  shining  circle  cease  to  run  ; 

Soon  shall  to-morrow  turn  to  yesterday. 
That  knife  of  shadow  cutting  in  the  sun 

Cuts  patiently  thy  light  of  life  away. 

But  all  these  sad  thoughts  have  nothing  to  do  with  our 
sun-dial.  It  only  counts  the  sunny  hours.  Finally,  I  would 
make  a  practical  scientific  claim  for  sun-dial  time  over  time  as 
told  by  ordinary  clock  and  watch.  If  it  is  unreliable  compared 
with  Greenwich  time,  it  has  compensating  advantages.  Per- 
sonally I  have  never  felt  any  real  curiosity  as  to  the  time  of 
day  at  Greenwich.  I  never  find  myself  saying :  "  Now  I 
wonder  what  time  it  is  at  Greenwich  ?"  Who  would  nor 
forego  Greenwich  time  for  a  clock  that  will  tell  you  the  time 
at  such  fascinating  places  as  Peking,  Agra,  Surat,  Bagdad,  Con- 
stantinople, Aleppo,  Rome,  Madrid,  Amsterdam,  Bantam,  Mex- 
ico, Charlestown,  Moscow,  Barbadoes,  the  Bermudas,  James- 
town, New  York,  and  Madeira  —  and  such  a  clock  is  our 
sun-dial. 

Think  of  the  wonderfulness  of  being  able,  thousands  of 
miles  away  on  an  English  lawn,  to  tell  the  time  at  Peking! 
What  will  science  do  next  ?  It  is  like  knowing  the  time  of 
day  in  the  moon.     And  that  reminds  me  that  Perdita's  latest 

20 


AN   OLD   COUNTRY   HOUSE 

fancy  is  for  a  moon- dial.  I  confess,  too,  that  if  one  can 
imagine  anything  more  fascinating  than  a  sun-dial,  it  would 
be  a  moon- dial  —  the  veritable  clock  of  lovers!  A  certain 
famous  horologer  of  the  sixteenth  century,  Sebastian  Munster, 
of  Basel,  invented  a  moon-dial ;  and  there  is  a  wonderful  sun- 
dial in  one  of  the  college  courts  at  Cambridge  which  can  be 
used  as  a  moon-dial  too. 

Yes !  we  must  certainly  have  a  moon-dial  in  our  garden. 


M   n©H&   MO?   VHWRTOMA 


xo 


21 


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Our  Tree-top  Library 


i 

PERHAPS,  dear  reader,  it  has  not  chanced  to  be  one  of 
your  dreams  to  build  a  library  in  a  tree-top.  If  you  ever 
thought  of  it,  maybe  the  recollection  of  our  arboreal  ancestors 
deterred  you.  Perdita  did  not  miss  this  opportunity  for  a 
joke  at  my  expense  when  she  discovered  my  project. 

"  You  monkey !"  she  laughed  ;  "  are  you  never  going  to 
grow  up  ?     Are  you  always  going  to  stay  a  baby  ?" 

"  If  I  possibly  can,"  I  answered. 

About  that  time  Perdita  and  I  were  somewhat  anxiously 
awaiting  the  event  in  regard  to  a  certain  business  matter ;  and 
we  had  said  to  each  other  that  if  all  came  about  as  we  hoped,  we 
might  each  buy  our  heart's  desire — however  useless  and  absurd 
it  might  seem  to  others — to  the  extent  of  ten  pounds  apiece. 

Now  I  well  knew  what  Perdita's  desire  was,  though  I 
would  not  tell  it,  at  present,  for  the  world ;  and  I  was  equally 
certain  that  she  could  never  guess  mine.  At  all  events,  we 
were  pledged  to  each  other  not  to  ask  or  tell — till  the  money 
came  true. 


AN   OLD   COUNTRY   HOUSE 

Meanwhile,  however,  we  both  secretly  plotted  so  to  pre- 
pare our  plans  that,  whether  the  luck  came  our  way  or  not, 
the  plans  must  be  carried  out.  The  idea  which  gave  me  so 
much  secret  happiness  was  only  indirectly  my  own.  I  trace 
its  inception  to  a  little,  adventurous  daughter  of  ours,  aged  two 
and  a  half,  who  had  been  strictly  forbidden  to  stray  outside 
the  children's  corner  of  the  garden,  and  on  no  account  to  tap 
on  the  prison  window  of  work  from  which  I  daily  look  out  on 
the  lawn,  and  the  great  trees,  and  the  whole  dewy,  shining, 
lazy  world. 

There  are  exceptions,  however,  to  all  rules.  Freya  is  old 
enough  to  understand  that.  And  when  you  have  found  a 
strange  and  somewhat  terrifying  bunch  of  young  birds  fallen 
from  the  big  tree  and  making  sad  little  noises  on  the  ground, 
surely  there  is  no  harm  in  clutching  one  firmly  round  its  long, 
yellow  neck,  as  though  it  were  a  turkey,  and  tumbling  across 
the  grass  to  that  forbidden  window  to  tell  the  studious  supreme 
being  of  your  little  life  what  has  happened.  You  may  have  an 
idea  in  your  small  head,  born  of  previous  escapades,  that  that 
mysterious  being  who  scratches  inside  there  all  day  with  a  pen 
rather  likes  to  be  interrupted  ;  so  you  go  bravely  on.  Within 
a  few  yards  of  the  goal  nurse  spies  you  and  calls  reprovingly, 
but  you  know  it  is  only  stage-thunder  and  take  no  notice. 
You  know  in  your  baby  heart  that  if  you  fall  down  a  yard  or 
two  from  the  window,  it  will  be  all  the  better.  But  this  time 
you  don't ;  instead,  you  arrive  proud  and  safe  with  a  choked 
fledgling  in  your  firm  fat  little  hand. 

Now  when  Freya  brought  me  to  the  foot  of  the  two  giant 
oaks  which  make  a  temple  of  green  shade  in  one  corner  of  our 
garden,  and  showed  me,  with  plaintive  baby  explanation,  a 
fallen  broken  nest,  I  forgot  for  the  moment  that  I  was  the 

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OUR   TREE-TOP    LIBRARY 

decorous  supreme  being  of  her  blue-eyed  life,  and  became  a 
bird-nesting  boy  again.  "  Why,  how  long  it  is  since  I  climbed 
a  tree  1"  1  said  to  myself.  "  How  much  has  happened  since 
then  I" 

"  I  wonder  if  I  can,"  I  said  presently,  looking  up  the  latticed 
bark  longingly.  "  Anyhow,  here  goes."  After  some  tough 
scrambling,  which  would  have  been  nimbler  a  few  years  ago, 
I  found  myself  firmly  seated  in  the  first  fork,  some  twenty 
feet  above  Freya's  wondering  eyes,  looking  up  at  me  like 
daisies  from  the  grass. 

And  then,  I  confess,  I  momentarily  forgot  my  little  friend, 
for  a  great  desire  to  climb  up  and  up,  to  explore  this  green 
heaven  of  fresh  leaves,  had  come  upon  me.  I  was  only  a  few 
feet  from  the  ground,  yet  how  hidden  it  seemed !  How  secret 
and  alone  I  felt !  My  memory  told  me  that  a  few  yards  away 
was  a  busy  house  running  in  my  humble  name,  that  a  minute 
or  two  ago  I  had  been  writing  at  a  desk,  that  my  wife  was 
writing  her  letters  for  the  afternoon  mail,  that  nurse  was  sit- 
ting lengthening  a  frock  for  Hesper  under  the  Japanese  fir,  and 
that  presently  Emma  would  be  carrying  the  tea-tray  to  the 
shady  side  of  the  great  rhododendrons.  My  memory  told  me 
all  this — but  I  didn't  believe  it.  I  was  alone  in  a  palace  of 
leaves,  chamber  and  chamber  of  which  opened  out  before  me 
as  I  climbed  higher,  and  the  sky  came  nearer.  I  firmly  believe 
I  should  have  reached  the  stars  but  for  a  voice  that  presently 
came  up  to  me  from  the  foot  of  the  tree,  fathoms  deep  in 
leaves — 

"  Hush-a-bye,  baby, 
In  a  tree-top — " 

It  was  Perdita  singing  derisively,  and  while  I  hastily  descended, 

27 


AN   OLD   COUNTRY    HOUSE 

Emma  caught  sight  of  me  as  she  was  carrying  the  tea-tray 
across  the  lawn. 

But  I  could  see  that  Freya  respected  me  all  the  more. 


II 


I  didn't  mind  Perdita's  banter.  I  had  got  my  idea — thanks 
to  Freya,  who  was  presently  carried  in  tears  to  a  less  exciting 
world.  I  had  found  a  fascinating  way  of  spending  my  ten 
pounds. 

"  Your  eyes  are  very  bright  this  afternoon,"  said  Perdita,  as 
we  sat  over  our  tea  amid  the  mellow  light  and  sound  of  a 
country  sunset. 

"They  are  bright  with  bird-nesting." 

"  I  believe  you  are  up  to  some  mischief,"  she  added. 

I  was. 

For  when  dinner  was  over  I  pleaded  the  necessity  of  mid- 
night oil  over  an  unfinished  page,  and  so  soon  as  all  seemed 
safe  I  left  my  study  by  the  postern-gate,  and,  stealing  over  the 
extremely  wet  meadows,  went  softly  under  the  rising  moon 
to  my  friend  and  fellow-conspirator,  the  village  carpenter. 

We  call  him  "  carpenter,"  but  such  a  description  implies  a 
limitation  which,  if  he  were  a  more  conceited  man,  he  would 
resent  as  insulting,  for  I  have  never  found  anything  that 
"  Mr.  Lee "  could  not  do  in  an  emergency.  He  should  be 
called  "  the  man  of  general  genius "  —  and  he  lives  in  our 
village. 

I  can  scarcely  hope  to  make  clear  to  the  town  reader  how 
absolutely  worth  his  weight  in  gold  is  such  a  man  as  Mr.  Lee 
in  a  country  village.    There  is  hardly  any  form  of  household 

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29 


AN    OLD   COUNTRY    HOUSE 

trouble  in  which  Mr.  Lee  cannot  help  you.  He  knows  the 
veins  and  arteries  of  an  old  house  like  a  physician. 

No  mystery  lurks  for  him  in  any  cistern,  however  mys- 
terious. No  question  of  water  supply  or  drainage  is  too 
baffling  for  Mr.  Lee.  When  you  give  up  the  behavior  of  the 
kitchen  boiler  —  you  send  for  Mr.  Lee.  When  the  autumn 
gales  choke  the  old  chimneys  with  smoke — you  send  for  Mr. 
Lee.  When  tiles  are  torn  from  the  roof  and  the  rain  is  coming 
in  through  the  counterpane — oh,  how  glad  we  are  to  see  you,  Mr, 
Lee !  When  the  well  has  grown  doubtful  and  the  pump  refuses 
to  act — please  send  for  Mr.  Lee.  And  in  winter,  with  its  ro- 
mance of  snowlit  roofs,  and  its  inner  agony  of  burst  pipes — well, 
then,  of  course,  Mr.  Lee  can  just  take  his  pick  of  the  universe. 

So  over  the  moonlit  meadows  I  went  with  my  project  to 
Mr.  Lee.  The  little  workshop  adjoining  his  cottage  was  un- 
wontedly  lit  up.  Looking  inside,  1  found  Mr.  Lee  hard  at  work 
— on  a  coffin. 

"Why,  who's  dead  now?"  I  said. 

"  Widow  Remnant,"  he  answered.  "  Dead  this  afternoon, 
poor  old  soul !" 

And  Mr.  Lee  ceased  his  work  a  moment  and  touched  his  hat. 
He  was  a  boyish-looking  little  man,  with  an  impish  tilt  to  his 
nose,  and  small,  clever  eyes  ;  and  you  would  hardly  have  taken 
him  for  the  father  of  twelve  children.  But  such  is  village 
productiveness.  Widow  Remnant  was  well  known  to  me,  a 
bent,  witchlike  old  woman,  whom  I  had  often  come  upon  in 
my  walks,  gathering  sticks,  in  a  scarlet  cloak.  She  lived  en- 
tirely alone  in  a  remote  cottage  on  the  edge  of  a  solitary  bit 
of  woodland,  and  a  certain  halo  of  romance  had  always  in- 
vested her  in  my  imagination  from  a  village  story  which  con- 
nected her  with  a  lawless,  adventurous  past,  in  which  our 

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corner  of  the  world  was  known  to  have  had  somewhat  more 
than  its  share.  Widow  Remnant,  it  was  said,  had  been  a  high- 
wayman's love — in  the  days,  sixty  or  seventy  years  ago,  when 
your  coach  was  still  liable  to  be  stopped  at  the  cross-roads 
and  your  pockets  rifled  by  the  light  of  the  moon.  The  high- 
wayman had  evidently  loved  and  ridden  away  many  years 
ago,  but  it  was  confidently  stated  that  she  lived  still  on  money 
that  he  had  given  her ;  and  I  had  never  passed  her  cottage 
without  picturing  in  fancy  some  secret  corner  inside  where, 
perhaps  in  an  old  teapot,  or  an  old  tea-caddy,  she  kept  her 
store  of  antique  gold  pieces — gold  pieces  with  such  various 
histories :  gold  pieces,  maybe,  of  some  paunched  justice  of  the 
peace  on  his  way  to  hang  knaves  at  the  next  market-town  ; 
gold  pieces  of  bronzed  sailors  walking  from  Portsmouth  to 
London  with  their  prize-money  jingling  in  their  pockets ;  gold 
pieces  of  homespun  merchants  clucking  with  terror  like  over- 
fed turkeys  at  the  sight  of  the  cocked  horse-pistols ;  gold 
pieces  even  of  some  dandified  young  officer  of  the  King's 
Own  on  his  way  to  visit  my  lord  on  his  outlandish  country 
estate.  I  had  often  been  tempted  to  try  to  learn  Mrs.  Rem- 
nant's story  from  her  own  lips,  but  she  had  a  proud,  uncom- 
municative old  face  that  didn't  encourage  conversation,  and  a 
sinister  something  that  warned  you  off.  So,  beyond  occa- 
sionally passing  the  time  of  day  to  each  other,  we  had  never 
spoken.  Now  it  was  too  late  to  learn  her  secret,  and  Mr.  Lee 
told  me  that  there  were  already  several  rival  claimants  for  the 
highwayman's  gold. 

"  When  do  you  expect  to  finish  the  coffin?"  I  asked  Mr.  Lee. 

"  In  a  couple  of  hours  or  so." 

"  Could  you  meet  me  at  six  o'clock  to-morrow  morning  under 
the  big  oaks  in  the  garden  ?    I  have  a  new  plan  to  discuss." 

3i 


AN   OLD   COUNTRY    HOUSE 


»*■ 


Mr.  Lee  was  not  unaccustomed  to 
humoring  my  fancies,  so  he  replied  with 
a  ready  "  Certainly,  sir " ;  and  next 
morning  when  I  arrived  twenty  minutes 
late  at  the  rendezvous  I  found  him 
awaiting  me.  It  didn't  occur  to  me  till 
afterwards  that  for  him  it  was  already 
late  in  the  day.  I  was  a  little  shy  at 
broaching  my  scheme,  but  when  at  last  I 
ventured  to  confess  it,  I  was  touched  by 
the  sympathetic  reception  Mr.  Lee  gave 
it.  Unexpectedly,  it  seemed,  I  had 
touched  some  old  spring  of  boyhood  in 
this  father  of  twelve  children,  a  boy- 
hood I  soon  found  far  from  being 
rusty. 

Mr.  Lee  also,  it  seemed,  was  still  a 
bird-nester — in  spite  of  his  large  family. 
It  made  me  blush  to  see  how  nimbly  he 
climbed  the  tree,  I  lumbering  and  crash- 
ing after  him.  When  we  had  climbed 
to  within  a  few  feet  of  the  top,  we  sat, 
he  in  one  fork,  and  I  in  another,  to  take 
measurements.  There  were  three  strong 
forks  capable  of  carrying  a  stout  trian- 
gular foundation,  each  side  of  which 
would  measure  about  twelve  feet.  On 
this,  Mr.  Lee  assured  me,  it  would  be 
easy  to  build  quite  a  comfortable  little 
room.  That  was  all  I  wanted  to  hear. 
Thus  Mr.  Lee  aided  and  abetted  me  in 


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what,  in  country  speech,  will  no  doubt  come  to  be  described 
as  my  "folly." 

Then  we  walked  the  stream-side  together,  I  accompanying 
Mr.  Lee  to  some  distant  day's  work,  discussing  estimates,  and 
incidentally  talking  trout,  for  I  found — whisper  it  not — that 
Mr.  Lee  was  an  expert  night  fisherman. 

I  had  never  suspected,  till  Mr.  Lee  told  me,  how  that  lit- 
tle thread  of  brook,  proceeding  pasturally  under  its  gnarled 
willows,  so  idle  on  summer  days  as  to  be  hardly  able  to  crawl 
its  way  through  the  daisied  landscape— how  it  could  possibly 
lead  so  different  a  life  after  sunset.  When  I  had  gathered 
purple  loosestrife  on  its  banks,  or  stood  on  stones  in  midstream 
to  pluck  the  exquisite  wax  and  wool  of  the  arrow-head,  I  had 
no  suspicion  that  hidden  lines  were  lying  all  about  me,  cun- 
ningly moored  below  the  water's  edge,  fastened  to  roots  of  old 
trees,  or  anchored  by  heavy  stones,  or  attached  to  cunningly 
unobtrusive  floats.  But  Mr.  Lee  assured  me  that  such  was 
the  case,  and  that  if  I  could  manage  to  rise  some  morning  as 
early  as  three  o'clock  and  brave  the  dews  of  the  meadow,  I 
should  fine  the  river- banks  haunted  by  misty  forms — forms 
that  in  the  daytime  were,  say,  the  village  plumber,  or  the  bar- 
man at  the  Red  Cow,  or  Tim  the  Thatcher,  or  Jack  the  Broom- 
squire — anxiously  groping  for  their  sunk  lines. 

So  strong  is  the  poaching  instinct  in  man  that  he  will  risk 
an  appearance  before  a  justice  of  the  peace  for  the  sake  of  a 
paltry  trout  or  two — which  it  would  cost  him  far  less  trouble 
to  buy  from  the  fishmonger.  Ah,  it  is  not  the  trout,  but  that 
blessed  wild  instinct  in  all  of  us,  that  makes  it  worth  while 
to  lose  rest  and  run  risks  for  a  few  ounces  of  stolen  fish.  It 
is  not  the  fish,  but  the  delight  of  catching  them,  we  seek. 

It  is  to  be  out  under  the  stars,  out  in  the  dew,  with  the 

3  « 


AN   OLD   COUNTRY   HOUSE 

keen  smell  of  the  dawn  turning  our  heads,  out  under  the  free, 
untaxed  heaven,  hand  in  hand  with  the  wild  things  that  hate 
a  roof  and  die  in  a  cage,  playing  truant  from  civilization  with 
the  warm-hearted,  wanton  earth— it  is  for  this  we  poach  trout, 
and  it  is  for  this  we  are  absurd  enough  to  build  a  library  in 
a  tree-top. 

As  I  left  Mr.  Lee  and  walked  back  home  through  the 
meadows,  I  heard  afar  off  the  breakfast-gong  making  mellow 
curves  of  sound  through  the  house  and  garden,  and  I  half 
resented  the  harmony  of  that  civilized  existence,  all  the  wheels 
of  which,  thanks  to  my  dear  Perdita,  run  so  smoothly  and 
with  such  a  sweet  chiming.  But  as  I  bade  Perdita  good- 
morning  in  the  sunny  breakfast-room,  and  turned  to  my  letters 
neatly  awaiting  me  on  the  breakfast-table,  I  became  a  civilized 
being  again — though  my  head  was  still  a  little  tipsy  with  the 
dew. 

Ill 

Of  course  Perdita  knows  all  about  it  by  this  time — you 
cannot  build  a  library  in  a  tree-top  on  the  sly — and  my  arboreal 
library  is  now  one  of  my  many  acknowledged  follies.  It  has 
become  licensed  by  discovery,  and  passes  unnoticed  from  very 
familiarity.  When  I  press  the  secret  spring  that  lets  down  the 
ladder  by  which  I  climb  to  the  first  fork  of  the  oak-tree,  and 
then  draw  the  ladder  up  carefully  after  me,  nobody  cares 
enough  to  watch.  The  need  of  secrecy  is  long  since  passed. 
This  is,  of  course,  all  the  better,  for  thus  my  stronghold  of 
quietness  is  so  much  the  more  my  own. 

As  to  quietness,  most  people,  I  am  sure,  would  think  there 
was  enough  quietness  in  my  in-door  study  to  satisfy  any  rea- 

U 


OUR   TREE-TOP   LIBRARY 


sonable  being ;  but  then  in-door  quiet- 
ness and  out -door  quietness  are  two 
different  things — each  charming  in  its 
way.  Anything  more  exquisite  than  the 
in-door  quietness  of  our  old  house  I 
cannot  imagine.  We  rented  it  no  little 
on  that  account.  Indeed,  several  of  the 
rooms  are  furnished  entirely  with  si- 
lence. Many  people  would  call  them 
empty,  and  in  a  sense,  of  course,  they  are ; 
for  we  keep  nothing  in  them  but  light 
and  darkness.  For  us,  one  of  the  charms 
of  living  in  an  old  house  consists  in  hav- 
ing more  space  about  one  than  one  act- 
ually needs — from  the  utilitarian  point 
of  view.  A  house  every  part  of  which 
is  actively  occupied  is  spiritually,  if  not 
physically,  over  -  crowded.  The  soul 
takes  up  so  much  more  room  than  the 
body.  It  needs  long  corridors  of  silence, 
rooms  in  which  are  stored  nothing  but 
lonely  sunlight  —  and  perhaps  apples. 
Rooms  which  contain  other  furniture  are 
really  inhabited,  and,  however  carefully 
vacated  by  their  customary  occupants, 
are  apt  to  distract  by  alien  human  sug- 
gestions. 

In  every  wisely  arrayed  house  there 
are  always  two  or  three  empty  rooms— 
the  larger  the  better — and,  of  course,  in 
the  case  of  an  old  house  these  are  not 

IS 


$»<?<-& 


STRONG  IS  THE 
POACHING  INSTINCT 


AN   OLD   COUNTRY    HOUSE 

only  cisterns  of  silence,  but  by  the  fact  of  our  leaving  them 
unfurnished  with  our  modern  belongings  they  may  fairly  be 
held  to  preserve  the  more  completely  the  delicate  aroma  of 
antiquity.  I  won't  say  that  we  keep  our  stable  empty  for 
this  reason,  though  it  is  quite  true  that  it  gives  us  as  much 
pleasure — of  a  different  kindl — empty  (or  all  but  empty),  as 

if  it  were  filled  with  the  champing  of  the  whole  shire 

Hunt,  for  which  our  house  was  once  the  centre.  Fourteen 
horses  once  whinnied  and  rattled  their  chains  in  our  old 
stable — where  now  a  very  humble  pony  dwells,  like  a  peasant 
in  the  corner  of  some  forsaken  palace. 

But  I  don't  think  real  horses  would  give  us  half  so  much 
pleasure  as  the  thought  of  those  old  hunters,  some  of  which, 
no  doubt,  survive  in  colored  sporting  prints  in  inn  parlors  to 
this  day — equine  immortals.  Were  we  rich  enough  to  fill  our 
old  stable  again  with  the  warm  sounds  that  once  filled  it — 
horses,  and  the  purring  of  grooms,  and  the  sound  of  pails  on 
the  cobbled  floor— we  should  be  too  rich  to  enjoy  such  pleas- 
ures of  the  imagination  as  those  of  which  I  write.  Money 
turns  the  pleasures  of  the  imagination  into  realities — which 
is  not  the  same  thing.  That,  perhaps,  is  the  meaning  of  the 
fable  of  Midas.  Were  we  rich  we  should  probably  complain 
that  the  stable  was  too  old-fashioned,  dark,  and  ill-ventilated ; 
we  should  need  a  bigger  saddle-room — charming  old  saddle- 
room  ! — whereas  now  the  stable  suits  us  very  well,  and  the 
granary  and  the  hay-loft  and  the  coach-house  are  all  equally 
to  our  mind.  In  fact,  nothing  about  our  old  house  gives  us 
more  satisfaction  than  our  cluster  of  russet-roofed  out-houses. 
The  beauty  of  their  grouping  is  most  useful  to  us. 

But,  Heavens !  What  a  digression !  And  yet  not  so  irrele- 
vant, after  all,  for  I  would  have  done  an  injustice  to  our  old 

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house  had  I  not  gone  out  of  my  way  to  give  some  hint  of 
the  catacombs  of  old  vatted  silence  which  it  contains. 

But  in-door  silence,  as  I  said  before,  is  one  thing ;  out-door 
silence  is  another.  However  silent  your  in-door  study  may 
be — even  at  six  of  the  morning  sun  or  of  a  lamplit  winter 
evening,  with  the  fire-light  flickering  cosily  on  your  dozing 
folios — it  is  quietness  in  a  cage.  Silence  out-of-doors  is  the 
free,  uncaptured  silence.  It  is  a  running  brook  of  silence,  as 
compared  with  silence  caught  in  a  pitcher.  It  talks  all  the 
time — and  still  is  silence.  It  is  silence  awake ;  a  silence  of 
gossiping  leaves,  of  visiting  lights  and  shadows,  of  soft,  brood- 
ing sounds,  of  butterflies  tilted  on  a  sudden  impulse  of  breeze ; 
a  silence  which  includes  the  brooding  dove,  and  the  lowing, 
impatient  cattle,  sweet  with  milk  in  the  far  pasture,  the  sudden 
neigh  of  some  old  horse,  resting  a  week  or  two  in  the  meadow, 
the  village  clock,  the  clink  of  the  blacksmith's  forge,  the  crying 
of  village  children,  and  the  barking  of  village  dogs. 

Were  it  only  for  the  enjoyment  of  such  silence,  it  would 
be  quite  worth  any  one's  while  to  build  a  library  in  a  tree-top. 

Apparently,  too,  since  men  began  to  read  at  all,  they  have 
found  a  peculiar  charm  in  reading  out-of-doors — witness  the 
old  song,  "  A  book  in  a  shady  nook."  However  rare  the  page, 
it  has  seemed  the  more  attractive  from  the  illuminated  traceries 
of  sunny  shadows  softly  swaying  across  it ;  tendrilled  leaf 
shadows,  and  little  darting  shadows  of  birds.  Our  tree-top 
library  systematizes  and  extends  this  pleasure.  In  place  of 
one  book  we  have  a  whole  library  practically  out-of-doors. 
For  as  much  as  possible  of  the  little  room  is  glass.  It  is  win- 
dowed all  round  like  a  light -house,  and  every  window  is 
caressed  by  soft  leaves  and  little  tapping  boughs.  And  all 
around  you  are  birds'  nests,  and  the  dreaming  chrysalis  hidden 

37 


AN    OLD   COUNTRY    HOUSE 

in  the  wrinkled  bark.  You  can  never  know  till  you  build  your 
own  nest  high  up  in  the  boughs  how  much  goes  on  within  a 
seemingly  idle  tree  during  a  summer  day :  all  the  hard  work 
and  the  pretty  play,  the  tragedies  and  comedies,  the  war  that 
is  waged  and  the  love  that  is  made,  from  morning  till  moon- 
light ;  so  mirthful  at  morning  with  bands  of  singing  birds,  so 
haunted  at  moonlight  with  bat  and  owl  and  ghostly  moth  ;  and 
maybe,  if  you  blow  out  your  lamp  and  keep  very  still,  some- 
where about  midnight  the  dryad  who  lives  in  a  dainty  cup- 
board down  below  will  open  her  hidden  door  and  steal  up  to 
peer  in  through  the  windows  at  the  moonlit  shelves. 

This  fancy  of  mine  nas  enabled  me  to  gratify  another  fancy 
for  the  first  time  in  my  life. 


IV 


I  have  always  wished  to  sleep  a  night  out-of-doors,  but  till 
1  built  this  library  1  never  found  an  easy  opportunity.  Some- 
what feebly,  I  admit,  I  had  hitherto  given  in  to  the  advice  of 
friends  who  talked  oracularly  of  night-air.  Night-air  is  popu- 
larly supposed  to  be  bad  for  every  one,  and  I  was  told  it  would 
be  particularly  bad  for  me.  Perhaps  for  that  very  reason  I 
have  been  so  anxious  to  try  it. 

Of  course  I  didn't  tell  Perdita — that  would  have  ruined  all — 
and  I  chose  a  still,  summer  night  made  of  soft,  warm  stars,  and 
I  waited  till  Perdita  was  fast  locked  up  in  the  fairyland  of 
sleep.  Like  all  children,  she  sleeps,  without  knowing  it,  from 
moonrise  to  cock-crow,  and  even  later ;  and  I  knew  she  would 
not  miss  me.  Nor  did  she.  Had  I  been  leaving  her  forever, 
she  could  not  have  slept  a  deeper  sleep.     So,  without  the 

?8 


OUR   TREE-TOP    LIBRARY 


AN    OLD   COUNTRY   HOUSE 

slightest  hinderance,  and  with  no  single  alarm,  I  presently 
found  myself  out  in  the  strange,  fresh  night,  with  a  cushion 
in  one  arm  and  a  travelling-rug  on  the  other,  and  soon  I  was 
away  up  among  the  leaves,  quite  near  to  the  moon.  No  doubt 
it  may  seem  strange  that  a  man  should  leave  a  warm  bed  and 
a  dreaming  wife  to  sleep  out  in  a  tree — as  strange  as  that  a 
man  should  have  a  cosey  in-door  library,  with  busts,  and  rugs, 
and  a  ruddy,  talkative  fire,  and  yet  think  it  worth  while  to  do 
his  reading  in  a  tree. 

But  before  any  one  mocks  me,  let  him  make  the  experiment 
himself.  If  he  is  at  all  jaded,  if  the  salt  of  life  has  lost  its 
savor,  if  nothing  new  seems  left,  let  him  lie  on  his  back  out- 
of-doors  a  summer  night  and  watch  the  mighty  march-past 
of  the  stars.     If  he  needs  a  new  sensation,  let  him  try  that. 

For  my  part,  after  that  summer  night  in  a  tree-top  I  never 
want  to  sleep  in- doors  again.  What  nonsense  it  all  proved 
about  the  night-air !  I  never  rested  so  well,  and  never  woke 
up  so  refreshed  in  my  life.  I  admit  it  took  me  some  little  time 
to  fall  asleep.  But  that,  of  course,  was  due  to  the  novelty  of 
the  experience,  as  well  as  to  the  many  gentle  presences  breath- 
ing about  me,  moaning  and  sighing  in  their  sleep — not  to  men- 
tion a  troublesome  nightingale— all  in  their  green  beds  in  the 
same  blue  bedroom  as  I. 

And  wonderful  as  the  night,  no  less  wonderful  was  the 
morning.  O,  the  dew  and  the  lustral  light,  and  the  awakening 
sound  and  color  of  things,  and  all  the  aroused  luxurious  per- 
fumes of  the  world ! 

Everything  preening  and  washing  itself  in  the  dewy  glitter, 
and  the  morning  star  kissing  its  hand  to  the  new  day. 

Every  night  a  new  heaven  ;  every  morning  a  new  earth — 
to  be  seen  in  the  very  act  of  creation — yet  we  see  them  not. 

40 


OUR   TREE-TOP   LIBRARY 

We  shut  them  away  behind  heavy  curtains,  and  the  miracle 
goes  on  with  none  to  see  it,  save  the  shepherd  rubbing  his 
eyes  in  his  little  hut  on  the  down,  or  the  workman  wearily 
walking  towards  six  o'clock,  or  the  sailor  on  the  sea. 

When  1  was  dressed  next  morning,  I  peeped  in  at  Perdita. 
She  was  still  fast  asleep,  with  her  head  upon  her  arm,  dream- 
ing still — but  never  dreaming  how  I  had  spent  the  night.  I 
didn't  waken  her,  and  I  have  never  told  her  till  now. 


The  Joy  of  Gardens 


The  Joy  of  Gardens 


PERHAPS  no  word  of  six  letters  concentrates  so  much 
human  satisfaction  as  the  word  "garden."  Not  acciden- 
tally, indeed,  did  the  inspired  writer  make  Paradise  a  garden ; 
and  still  to-day,  when  a  man  has  found  all  the  rest  of  the  world 
vanity,  he  retires  into  his  garden.  When  man  needs  just  one 
word  to  express  in  rich  and  poignant  symbol  his  sense  of  ac- 
cumulated beauty  and  blessedness,  his  first  thought  is  of  a 
garden.  The  saint  speaks  of  "  The  Garden  of  God."  "  A  gar- 
den enclosed  is  my  sister,  my  spouse,"  cries  the  lover ;  or, 
"There  is  a  garden  in  her  face,"  he  sings;  and  the  soldier's 
stern  dream  is  of  a  "garden  of  swords."  The  word  "heaven" 
itself  is  hardly  more  universally  expressive  of  human  happiness 
than  the  word  "garden." 

And  you  have  only  to  possess  even  quite  a  small  garden  to 
know  why.  A  small,  old  garden.  So  long  as  it  be  old,  it  hardly 
matters  how  small  it  is,  but  old  it  must  be,  for  a  new  garden  is 
obviously  not  a  garden  at  all.  And  most  keenly  to  relish  the 
joy  which  an  old  garden  can  give,  vou  should  perhaps  have 
been  born  in  a  city  and  dreamed  all  your  life  of  some  day 
owning  a  garden.  No  form  of  good  fortune  can,  I  am  sure, 
give  one  a  deeper  thrill  of  happy  ownership  than  that  with 
which  one  thus  city-bred  at  last  enters  into  possession  of  an 
old  country  garden.    O,  that  first  dewy  morning,  when,  before 

4* 


AN    OLD   COUNTRY    HOUSE 

the  rest  of  the  house  is  up,  you  steal  out  into  the  exquisite 
purity  and  peace  of  the  young  day,  mysteriously  virgin  in  its 
clear -eyed  freshness!  Some  of  the  strangeness  of  starlight 
still  lingers  in  the  air,  and  the  sunlight  slants  over  the  shim- 
mering grass  with  an  indescribable  suggestion  of  loneliness, 
a  look  of  blended  romance  and  pathos  which  seems  to  hint 
at  some  lost  immortal  meaning.  Everything  your  eye  falls 
upon  seems  to  wear  something  of  the  same  look,  and  as  your 
eye  ranges  with  a  sumptuous  sense  of  proprietorship  from  end 
to  end  of  your  little  domain — the  great  oaks  still  sleeping  in 
mist,  the  quiet  shrubberies,  the  gossamered  flower-beds,  the 
sheets  of  shining  lawn,  the  walls  of  mossy  bricks  trellised  with 
long-armed  pear-trees,  the  russet-roofed  out-houses — and  at 
last  rests  lovingly  on  the  warm  chimneyed  gables  where  your 
loved  ones  still  lie  asleep,  your  heart  is  filled  with  a  sense  of 
home  more  profound,  more  unshakable,  and  more  pathetic  than 
you  have  ever  felt  before —before  you  owned  a  garden. 

Perhaps,  when  we  analyze  it,  it  is  this  deep  sense  of  home 
which  is  the  most  real,  the  most  vital,  part  of  our  joy  in  gar- 
dens. A  house  without  a  garden  is  only  a  temporary  home. 
It  is  not  immediately  connected  with  the  great  life-supplying 
currents  of  the  universe.  To  live  in  town,  in  a  row  of  houses 
where  all  the  necessities  of  life  are  delivered  daily  by  para- 
sitical, piratical  tradesmen,  is  to  live  by  proxy.  It  is  a  life 
where  all  the  real  work  of  living  is  done  for  you,  and  therefore 
not  life.  Till  you  grow  your  own  potatoes,  you  do  not  really 
begin  to  live.  You  have  no  true  home — though  you  may  rent 
a  charming  flat.  But  with  everything  you  grow  for  yourself 
and  do  for  yourself  the  nearer  you  approach  the  possession  of 
a  real  home ;  for  thus  you  become  literally  at  home  in  the 
world.    You  are  as  immediately  fed  by  the  life-blood  of  the 

46 


THE  JOY   OF   GARDENS 

Great  Mother  as  a  deep-rooted  tree,  or  a  sturdy  little  spring 
laughing  up  from  the  foundations  of  the  earth. 

That  this  is  no  mere  sentiment  you  can  soon  prove  by  the 
easy  test  of  growing  your  own  flowers.  So  soon  as  you  cut 
your  own  roses  you  will  wonder  how  you  could  ever  have 
been  satisfied  with  "  bought "  roses  from  the  florist.  Nothing 
we  buy  is  really  ours — particularly  flowers.  It  is  only  the 
flowers  we  grow,  or  at  least  gather  for  ourselves,  that  are  really 
ours.  Suppose  you  are  giving  a  little  dinner.  Of  course  it 
would  save  time — and  perhaps  even  money — to  send  an  order 
to  the  florist  for  some  flowers  for  the  table;  but  bought  flowers 
are  really  artificial  flowers,  and  if  instead  you  have  early  in  the 
day  put  on  a  pair  of  gardening-gloves  and  gone  out  and  killed  a 
few  of  your  own  home-reared  roses,  you  will  be  surprised,  over 
dinner,  what  a  difference  it  will  make.  The  guests  may  not 
notice  the  difference,  but  you  will  know ;  and  you  will  have 
the  same  satisfaction  as  you  look  at  your  own  home-made 
roses  as  you  have  when  at  breakfast  you  beg  your  friends  to 
try  some  of  the  honey  from  your  own  honey-combs.  Your 
guests  may  taste  no  particular  reason  for  your  being  so  proud 
of  your  own  honey.  There  is  even  better  to  be  bought  in  the 
shops.  But  let  them  start  a  garden  of  their  own,  with  a  row  of 
tiny  thatched  bee- cottages,  and  they  will  soon  understand. 
Naturally  you  love  this  honey  more  than  any  other  honey  in 
the  world — for  aren't  the  bees  that  made  it  your  own  personal 
tenants  and  friends,  and  don't  you  say  "good-morning"  to 
them  every  day  as  you  go  for  your  walk  over  the  hill 
through  your  neighbor's  clover  ?  You  know  so  well  where 
the  honey  came  from,  and  the  rose-bushes  from  which  you 
gathered  these  roses  are  as  individual  to  you  as  the  face  of 
a  friend. 

47 


AN   OLD   COUNTRY    HOUSE 

It  is  with  home-grown  roses  as  with  home-made  bread 
and  home-brewed  ale.  The  accent  must  always  be  placed  on 
the  word  "  home."  They  grow  better  roses  in  nurseries,  they 
bake  better  bread  in  the  professional  bakeries,  and  brewers 
who  have  made  a  study  of  the  subject  are  said  to  brew  better 
ale  than  you  can  accomplish  in  your  antiquated  coppers ;  but 
then  the  prefix  "  home  "  makes  such  a  difference  to  the  quality 
of  fragrance  and  flavor.  Yes  I  our  fathers  and  mothers  were 
right.  Nothing  is  really  made  that  is  not  "home"  made.  And 
nothing  can  be  home-made  without  a  garden.  A  garden  1  To 
grow  one's  own  vegetables,  to  nurse  one's  own  flowers,  to  rear 
one's  own  chickens,  to  milk  one's  own  cow,  and  to  keep  one's 
own  carriage!  This  is  to  be  personally  acquainted  with  the 
universe.  All  this,  you  may  say,  is  to  take  gardens  a  little 
portentously.  It  is  to  treat  of  gardens  with  somewhat  of  a 
cosmic  seriousness.  Well,  any  one  who  has  a  garden  knows 
that  unless  you  take  it  seriously — there  is  no  garden. 

A  garden  is  a  thing  of  leisurely  aristocratic  old  roots  and 
carefully  escorted  flowers.  It  brooks  no  forgetfulness,  and 
will  not  flourish  on  perfunctory  attentions.  It  has  no  blossoms 
for  an  absentee  lover.  Nothing  in  the  world  needs  so  much 
love,  but  nothing  gives  you  so  much  pure  love  in  return.  A 
man  really  in  love  with  a  garden  is  perhaps  safer  from  the 
usual  human  temptations  than  any  other.  What,  indeed,  is 
there  outside  his  garden  to  compare  for  him  with  the  joy  and 
fascination  he  finds  within?  What  mortal  honors  can  weigh 
with  him  against  his  pride  in  his  distinguished  chrysanthe- 
mums? And  woman  has  no  seductions  for  the  man  who  cannot 
take  his  eyes  from  his  magnolias.  And  as  for  riches,  no  mere 
money  in  the  bank  can  bring  one-half  such  a  sense  of  aggran- 
dizement as  that  with  which  you  walk  a  friend  round  your 

48 


THE  JOY   OF   GARDENS 

garden  to  show  him  your  rhododendrons  in  particularly  pros- 
perous flower. 

Then  the  mere  names  of  certain  flowers  and  fruits  give  their 
happy  owner  a  sense  of  romantic  wealth  and  distinction  in  their 
very  mention.  "  I  must  show  you  our  old  tulip-tree,"  you  say, 
just  as  the  possessor  of  a  gallery  leads  you  off  to  see  the  por- 
trait of  one  of  his  ancestors  painted  by  Van  Dyck  or  Gains- 
borough. 

Mulberry-trees  carry  with  them,  too,  a  certain  distinction ; 
and  think  what  a  romantic  suggestiveness  there  is  in  the  words 
"quince"  and  "medlar."  Will  you  ever  forget  your  thrill  of 
happy  pride  when,  soon  after  you  had  come  into  your  garden, 
and  were  as  yet  only  half  aware  of  all  its  hidden  wealth  of 
sleeping  seed  and  dreaming  bulb,  a  friend  better  read  in  the 
green  book  of  nature  cried  out,  "Why,  this  is  a  medlar!"  A 
medlar-tree — think  of  it!  It  is  like  having  the  Order  of  the 
Garter  in  one's  family. 

And  such  surprises  as  this  are  among  the  earliest  joys  of 
possessing  an  old  garden.  You  need  to  have  lived  with  your 
garden  at  least  a  whole  year  before  you  know  half  it  contains : 
for  so  many  loving  hands  have  been  busy  burying  hidden 
treasures  there  long  before  you  came.  This  demure,  out-of- 
the-way  bed  may  be  the  coffer  containing  one  knows  not  what 
precious  spices.  Some  morning  you  will  accidentally  visit  that 
neglected  corner  and  find  the  lid  wide  open  in  the  morning  sun. 
Snowdrops  have  a  wonderful  way  of  thus  taking  one  by  sur- 
prise. They  come  up  through  an  ambush  of  dead  leaves  with 
the  suddenness  of  fairies  in  a  Christmas  pantomime.  And  per- 
haps there  is  no  wile  of  one's  garden  that  so  captivates  one  as 
this  coquetry  of  surprise.  To  find  a  bed  of  violets  you  knew 
nothing  of  all  in  full  bloom  and  scent  is  as  though  your  sweet- 
4  49 


AN    OLD    COUNTRY   HOUSE 

heart  should  be  waiting  for  you  in  the  shrubbery  without  your 
knowing  it,  and  suddenly  throw  her  arms  around  your  neck. 
To  think  that  she  was  there  all  the  time,  and  you  had  no  idea 
of  it.  And  all  these  days  the  violets  have  been  working  away 
at  ascending  stem  and  unfolding  leaf  and  sweetening  flower. 
Oh,  the  patience  and  the  punctuality  of  natural  things !  Maybe 
you  have  been  idle  these  past  days.  Day  has  been  added  to 
day,  and  you  have  nothing  to  show  for  them  ;  but  meanwhile 
the  violets  have  been  hard  at  work,  and  in  all  your  garden 
there  has  been  no  such  thing  as  an  idle  root  or  leaf.  But 
excuse  this  lapse  into  moralizing.  Perhaps  the  only  fault  you 
can  find  with  keeping  a  garden  is  that  it  induces  to  moralizing, 
and,  if  not  watched,  is  apt  to  develop  a  sententious  wisdom, 
such  as  you  may  have  observed  in  gardeners.  But  gardeners 
are  no  part  of  my  present  subject,  which,  you  will  observe,  is 
— the  joy  of  gardens. 

As  far  as  possible,  the  lover  of  a  garden  is  his  own  gardener. 
A  man  who  leaves  all  the  care  of  his  garden  to  a  paid  servant 
is  like  a  mother  who  leaves  the  entire  care  of  her  children  to 
a  nurse.  Need  I  say  that  the  pleasures  of  a  garden  are  by  no 
means  only  in  its  product,  but  far  more  in  its  processes.  If 
you  really  love  your  garden,  you  know  everything  that  is 
going  on  in  every  bed  and  in  every  corner.  There  is  no 
need  to  read  the  little  labels  on  the  little  pieces  of  split  stick. 
When  once  you  really  know  your  garden,  you  know  exactly 
what  to  expect  from  every  inch  of  it,  and  you  expect  it  with 
all  your  heart.  How  lovingly  you  set  your  ear  to  the  ground 
to  know  if  this  or  that  green  child  of  yours  is  awake  and 
stirring  beneath;  and  when  the  sap  rises  again  in  the  old 
trees,  you  know  it  almost  as  soon  as  the  trees  themselves. 
It  is  only  at  first,  as  I  said,  that  the  snowdrops  can  steal  a 

So 


THE  JOY   OF   GARDENS 

march  upon  you.  Next  year  they  cannot  hope  to  take  you 
by  surprise. 

Then  a  garden  is  full  of  little  secrets  and  confidences  which 
you  lose  if  you  leave  it  entirely  to  the  gardener,  and  it  brings 
also  little  cares  that,  if  you  really  love  it,  you  would  not  miss 
for  the  world.  There  are  sick  plants  and  ailing  trees  to  think  of 
that  no  one  can  look  after  like  yourself,  and  morning  by  morn- 
ing you  visit  them  anxiously  and  carefully  attend  to  their  needs. 
I  knew  a  strong  man  who  passed  for  big  and  brutal  with  the 
rest  of  the  world,  but  I  once  saw  him  with  his  rose-trees.  A 
delicate  grafting  operation  had  recently  been  performed  upon 
one  of  his  favorite  roses.  You  should  have  seen  his  face  as  he 
examined  the  tiny,  bandaged  limb.  He  could  hardly  have  been 
more  tender  had  he  stood  by  his  wife's  bedside  during  some 
dangerous  illness.  He  was'  not  always  like  that,  I  have  heard ; 
and  it  is  true  that  all  a  man's  goodness  and  gentleness  will  some- 
times thus  exhaust  itself  through  an  apparently  trivial  outlet. 

A  gentleman  who  is  responsible  for  one  of  the  cruellest 
wars  in  the  history  of  the  world  is  known  to  have  a  passion 
for  orchids — though  those  who  see  something  evil  and  abnormal 
in  the  orchid,  in  spite  of  its  beauty,  will  perhaps  see  a  certain 
fitness  in  his  taste ;  for  that  flowers  impress  one  as  having  a 
certain  secondary  spiritual — one  might  almost  say  moral — mean- 
ing, will  certainly  not  be  denied  by  any  one  with  a  garden.  And 
the  impression  is  one  which  does  not  always  seem  explained 
by  association — though,  indeed,  the  extent  to  which  literary 
association  enters  into  our  feeling  for  flowers,  dear  for  their  own 
sakes,  are  dearer  still  to  us  because  of  that  "  laureate  hearse 
where  Lycid  lies."  Yet  literary  association  alone  is  far  from 
accounting  for  all  we  feel  about  certain  flowers.  Why,  for 
example,  do  some  flowers  strike  such  a  note  of  old-world  dis- 


AN    OLD   COUNTRY    HOUSE 

tinction  and  poignant  reminiscences — so  much  so  that  we  call 
them  old-fashioned  flowers,  though  actually,  of  course,  they 
are  no  more  old-fashioned  than  any  others.  Why  do  stocks 
and  wall-flowers  and  hollyhocks  seem  thus  especially  to  breathe 
the  fragrance  and  wear  the  air  of  antiquity,  as  though  they 
were  ruffs  and  went  in  farthingales ;  and  seem,  indeed,  out  of 
place  except  in  an  old-world  setting  of  Jacobean  gables  and 
formal  walks  and  clipped  yews  ;  whereas  geraniums  unfailingly 
suggest  the  crude,  newly  made  garden  of  some  modern  villa. 
And  to  say  this  is  to  be  reminded  of  an  old  garden  quarrel 
which  cannot  be  ignored  by.  the  lover  of  gardens — the  quarrel 
always  being  waged  between  the  formal  garden  and  the  so- 
called  "natural"  garden.  To  take  an  image  from  another  art, 
as  1  think  is  permissible,  a  garden  is  at  once  as  formal  and  as 
natural  as  the  art  of  a  poet  is  formal  and  natural.  All  art  is,  at 
least,  three  parts  nature.  But  as,  in  the  quaintly  ritualistic 
shapes  of  some  flowers  and  the  courtly  attitudes  of  some  trees, 
nature  herself  is  seen  to  choose  of  her  own  accord  a  ceremonial 
way  of  expressing  herself,  so  oftentimes  does  poetry,  as  she 
dances  her  glad  message  from  the  sources  of  life,  of  her  own 
free-will  approach  us  in  measured  steps  of  that  finished  art 
which,  as  he  who  must  have  known  best  has  told  us,  only 
nature  can  make.  A  lyric  is  none  the  less  a  "  natural  "  expres- 
sion because  it  conforms  to  a  certain  rhythmic  shape,  and  a 
"  yawp  "  is  no  more  natural  than  a  sonnet — in  fact,  it  is  less  so, 
for  nature  is  no  little  of  a  precision,  and,  at  all  events,  always 
insists  on  organic  structure,  and  therefore  form,  in  all  her  works. 
The  quarrels  between  the  partisans  of  the  formal  and  the  so- 
called  natural  gardens  arise  from  a  misconception  of  this  truth, 
from  an  idea  that  to  be  "  natural  "  you  have  only  to  be  careless, 
or  imitate  in  miniature  certain  "wild"  features  and  broad  effects 


THE  JOY   OF   GARDENS 

of  nature,  the  introduction  of  which  into  the  limited  space  of  a 
garden  is  incongruous  and  affected  to  the  last  degree.  A  lion 
or  a  polar  bear  would  hardly  be  less  in  keeping  with  an  Eng- 
lish garden  than  some  of  the  "  natural "  effects  the  landscape- 
gardener  occasionally  introduces  there. 

A  garden,  it  must  always  be  remembered,  is  an  out-door 
extension  of  the  home.  It  is,  so  to  speak,  the  green  with- 
drawing-room.  It  is  meant  to  suggest  human  occupation  no 
less  than  the  house,  and  not  the  untamed  wilderness.  It  is  no 
more  that  than  your  blue  Persian  cat  is  a  panther.  Its  necessary 
formalism  begins  with  the  smooth-shaven  lawn.  Could  any- 
thing be  more  "unnatural"?  Yet  even  the  landscape-gardener 
does  not  insist  upon  grass  in  its  wild  state.  Of  course  we 
know  how  beautiful  it  is  with  its  silken,  sworded  stems  and 
its  seeded  spires ;  but  the  place  for  it  in  that  state  of  nature  is 
the  meadow,  not  the  garden — for  in  the  garden  its  purpose  is 
that  of  a  rich  carpet,  on  which  delicately  shod  ladies  may  walk 
to  and  fro,  and  dainty  children  may  dance.  It  must  be  smooth 
as  a  sheet  of  paper  to  take  accurately  the  white  lines  of  the 
tennis-court,  with  its  trimly  strung  nets  and  its  swift-glancing 
players. 

And  so  with  the  rest  of  your  garden.  It  must  be  just  as 
much  natural  and  just  as  much  artificial  as  a  beautiful  woman, 
and  the  precise  compromise  between  art  and  nature  is  as  diffi- 
cult to  hit  in  one  case  as  in  the  other.  Indeed,  there  can  be  no 
precise  rule.  Individual  temperament  and  preference  must  al- 
ways decide,  and  thus  gardens  should  necessarily  be  as  differ- 
ent in  style  and  character  as  their  owners.  In  some  the  trim 
and  the  architectural,  the  courtly  side  of  a  garden,  will  be  ac- 
centuated. There  will  not  be  seen  a  grass  blade  in  the  walks, 
nor  a  daisy  on  the  lawn— oh,  slovenliness  unpardonable! — nor  a 


AN    OLD    COUNTRY   HOUSE 

rose-leaf  out  of  place,  nor  a  tree  that  is  not  as  well  groomed  as 
my  lady's  poodle. 

In  other  gardens  that  exuberance  of  green  vitality  against 
which  the  gardener  is  ever  sternly  on  the  watch  with  hoe  and 
pruning-knife  and  clashing  shears  is  permitted  a  license  of  in- 
trusion which  sometimes  threatens  to  engulf  the  garden  alto- 
gether. The  rose-trees  revel  in  a  riotous  allowance  of  unpruned 
shoots,  and  wind-blown  seeds  are  allowed  to  form  promising 
young  republics  on  the  lawn.  The  ivy  does  as  pleases  it,  get- 
ting into  the  eye  of  the  windows ;  and  if  you  suggest  that  so 
much  of  their  own  way  is  really  not  good  for  the  fruit  trees, 
you  are  looked  upon  as  a  vivisectionist.  You  need  your  win- 
ter boots  to  walk  the  lawn,  and  if  you  are  a  wearer  of  skirts, 
must  needs  lift  them  high  to  guard  them  from  the  damp  and 
the  various  small  inhabitants  of  the  grass  that  seldom  hear  the 
whirring  music  of  the  lawn-mower. 

Both  gardens  are  good  in  their  way.  For  myself  I  like  best 
a  garden  where  the  balance  between  formalism  and  anarchy  is 
somewhat  better  struck.  It  seems  fit,  I  think,  that  the  most 
formal  part  of  a  garden  should  be  that  near  the  house,  and  that 
it  should  wander  away  into  wildness  in  its  distant  corners.  It 
is  happily  devised,  I  think,  if,  as  with  many  English  gardens,  it 
should  be  walled  in  on  three  sides — the  house  itself  counting 
as  one  of  the  three  walls — and  open  to  the  wild  country  on  the 
fourth.  Your  garden  is  thus,  so  to  say,  like  an  arm  of  the  sea. 
It  is  sheltered  from  the  undue  violence  of  the  elements,  but  it 
is  also  open  to  the  great  life-bringing  tides.  Many  a  fascinating 
waif  of  the  old  wilderness  will  come  blown  up  on  autumn  gales 
through  that  open  door,  and  perhaps  stay  awhile,  with  their 
wandering  eyes,  in  your  garden — small,  storm-tossed  sailors 
from  the  great  deeps  far  out  yonder — and  there  are  always  more 

•     ^4 


THE  JOY   OF   GARDENS 

stars  to  be  seen  at  the  wild  end  of  your  garden.  There,  too, 
the  dew  is  freshest,  and  the  morning  sun  nearer  to  the  heart. 

It  is  strange,  if  yours  is  a  garden  like  that,  to  steal  out 
sometimes  after  sunset  and  walk  up  and  down  between  the 
home  end  of  the  garden  and  the  wild  end,  and  listen  to  the 
sounds  at  each  end.  At  the  home  end  what  warm,  human,  do- 
mestic sounds  float  out  through  the  windows,  confidentially 
opened  to  the  coming  night.  The  day  is  through  in  the  kitchen, 
and  the  servants  talk  and  laugh  together  with  an  off-duty  ease 
and  expansiveness  good  to  hear ;  from  the  nursery  come  the 
merry  sounds  of  the  bed-time  bath,  and  the  nursery  rhymes  ;  a 
restful  square  of  lamp-lit  window  speaks  of  some  one  within 
slowly  sipping  her  coffee  and  a  quiet  book — the  housewife,  her 
cares  ended,  also  enjoying  the  end  of  the  day.  The  village 
near  by  also  contributes  its  warm  sounds  of  relaxation,  which 
will  soon  be  sleep. 

Man  went  forth  to  his  labor  until  the  evening,  and  now  it  is 
evening ;  and  the  prayer  of  his  thanksgiving  sends  a  happy 
murmur  up  to  the  evening  sky.  Such  are  the  sounds  at  the 
home  end  of  the  garden.  _ 

Then  you  wander  towards  the  wild  end  of  the  garden,  and 
the  light  seems  to  grow  spectral  and  the  air  haunted.  Here  are 
no  warm  windows  or  friendly  human  murmur,  only  whisper- 
ing gleams  and  beckonings  and  half-frightened  sounds  call- 
ing you  out,  calling  you  away,  calling  you  beyond.  The  case- 
ments of  the  moon  are  being  opened.  The  night  meaning  of 
the  world  is  being  written  all  over  the  day  meadows ;  and  the 
woods  are  filling  with  witches.  As  the  daylight  fades  and  the 
stars  take  courage,  the  wild  voices  raise  themselves  out  of  the 
silence.  A  sudden  unearthly  laughter  comes  on  the  night  from 
some  far-away  covert,  and    the   night  is  still    again.     Then 

S5 


AN   OLD   COUNTRY   HOUSE 

wicked  chucklings  begin  here  and  there  in  the  darkness,  and 
something  sighs  at  your  elbow,  and  a  hidden  bird  drops  a  hint 
of  the  secret,  and  a  starbeam  offers  to  show  you  the  way.  The 
night  wind,  perfumed  with  all  the  spices  of  a  day's  wander- 
ing, throws  her  arms  about  you,  and  you  hear  the  litcle  stream 
that  slept  all  day  softly  serenading  the  evening  star.  O,  you 
gypsies  of  the  night ! — with  your  wind-swept,  heather-scented 
hair ;  with  your  waving  arms,  and  your  eyes  like  pools  hidden 
in  a  wood ;  with  your  breath  sweet  as  the  new-mown  field 
which  the  farmer  leaves. because  the  day  is  done;  with  your 
voices  deep  as  the  voice  of  the  wind  in  the  pines,  and  sweet  as 
the  voice  of  a  nymph  in  a  well — O,  you  gypsies  of  the  night ! 

Such  is  the  wild  end  of  the  garden. 

But  it  is  the  home  end  of  the  garden  that  is  the  real  garden 
—the  end  where  the  roses  climb  the  warm  wall  and  look  in 
through  the  nursery  window  ;  the  end  where  you  take  tea  in  a 
shady  corner  of  the  lawn,  and  even  dine  out  on  warm  summer 
nights  under  the  great  mulberry-tree  ;  the  end  where  the  chil- 
dren make  daisy  chains  and  play  at  horses  and  ring-a-ring-o'- 
roses ;  the  end  near  the  deep-set  door  in  the  old  wall  that 
opens  into  the  kitchen-garden — with  the  asparagus  and  the 
artichokes  and  the  strawberry-beds  and  the  netted  fruit  trees ; 
the  end  near  the  dove-cote  and  the  beehives  and  the  chickens  : 
the  home  end  of  the  garden. 


PERDITA'J"  LOVER/ 


WHEN  I  say  "  Perdita's  Lovers"  I  should  explain  that  I 
don't  mean  all  the  men  who  have  loved  Perdita,  and 
been  refused — for  my  sake!  Heavens!  I  am  not  going  to 
write  a  History  of  My  Own  Times.  I  am  thinking  only 
of  two  young  lovers  whom  Perdita  took  under  her  young 
matronly  wing  last  summer,  and  whom  —  unless  they  have 
pleasanter  things  to  do — we  hope  to  have  with  us  once  more 
this  July. 

"Why,  who  do  you  think  is  married?"  said  Perdita,  read- 
ing her  letters  one  August  morning  at  breakfast. 

"Julie  Fay!"  I  answered,  with  exasperating  promptitude. 
"  I  hate  you,"  answered   Perdita.    "  Why  do  you  always 
guess  right  away — just  as  though  you  were  a  scientist  ?    You 

*9 


AN    OLD   COUNTRY    HOUSE 

leave  nothing  to  the  imagination.  You  have  no  idea  of  the 
pretty  pretences  of  life.  Surely  you  could  have  pretended  a 
little  interested  surprise,  connived  at  a  little  mystery,  for  my 
sake.  The  longer  I  live  with  you  the  more  I  realize  that  you 
are  hopelessly  prosaic  and  matter-of-fact." 

"  It  is  Julie  Fay,  then  ?"  I  said,  rather  proud  of  having 
guessed  right.  But  Perdita  was  once  more  deep  in  sixteen 
prettily  covered  pages  of  note-paper,  and  I  waited  humbly  till 
she  felt  the  need  of  my  existence  once  more. 

"  Dear  little  people !  brave  little  people !"  she  cried,  as  she 
set  down  the  letter  by  her  tea-cup.  "  I  am  so  glad !  It  was 
the  only  thing  to  do— and  they  have  done  it." 

"  Really  irrevocably  done  it  ?"  I  asked. 

"  Yes !  Listen  to  some  of  Julie's  letter— and  I  wouldn't  read 
it  to  you  if  I  wasn't  dying  for  sympathy.  Oh,  how  can  you 
be  so  cynical  and  middle-aged— at  your  age!" 

'"  Oh,  Perdita — oh,  Perdita,  kiss  me — I  am  so  happy!  At 
last  Lloyd  and  I  are  married.  We  ran  away  last  Wednesday, 
and  we've  been  married  just  four  days.  We  couldn't  bear  it 
any  longer.  You  know  how  dear  home  is  to  me,  but  Lloyd  is 
dearer;  and  you  know  I've  been  a  good  girl,  and  waited  and 
waited  and  tried  to  win  father  round ;  but  it  was  no  use. 
Mother  has  all  along  done  her  best  for  us— that  dear,  naughty, 
wise  old  mother  of  mine — but  for  once  she  couldn't  get  her 
way.    You  know  father's  ambitions  for  me— and  I  think  you 

once  met  Lord  .    Of  course  I  can  see  father's  point  of 

view — dear,  good  thing.  What  right-minded  father,  with  the 
good  of  his  daughter  at  heart,  would  willingly  see  her  reject 
a  foolish  young  lord  for  a  wonderful  young  musician  ?  The 
worst  of  father  is  that  he  forgets  he  was  young  once  and  had 
his  romance  too.    Didn't  he  run  away  with  mother — when  he 

60 


PERDITA'S   LOVERS 

was  quite  as  poor  as  Lloyd  ?  But  mother  remembers,  and  I 
know  she'll  forgive  us ;  and,  indeed,  though  she  wouldn't  have 
felt  it  loyal  to  father  to  tell  us  to  do  what  we  have  done,  yet 
I  don't  think  it  will  surprise  her  a  great  deal ;  and  I  don't  think 
she'll  grieve  at  all — for  she'll  be  quite  sure  of  father  taking  us 
back — now  that  it  is  actually  done.  For  you  know  father  al- 
ways liked  Lloyd  for  himself.  The  only  fault  he  had  to  find 
with  him  was  that  he  was  a  musician— it  was  not  so  much 
that  he  was  poor.  He  was  a  musician!  Isn't  it  strange,  dear, 
how  fathers  hate  musicians  ?' " 

So  the  happy  letter  ran  on. 

Presently  I  interrupted,  perhaps  unnecessarily  anxious  to 
vindicate  myself  against  Perdita's  suggestions  of  hard-heart- 
edness.  "Perdita,"  said  I,  "what  do  you  say  to  these  little 
people  spending  some  of  their-  honey-moon  with  us?" 

"You  dear!"  cried  Perdita,  changing  her  opinion  of  me 
with  illogical  suddenness.    "  Do  you  really  mean  it  ?" 

"Of  course  I  do,"  I  replied.  "Why  should  you  think  other- 
wise ?  What's  this  new  idea  you  have  of  me  ?  When  have 
you  known  me  deaf  to  romance,  and  for  how  long  have  I 
been  so  prosaic  and  matter-of-fact  ?" 

"  You  would  really  like  them  to  come  ?"  asked  Perdita 
again. 

"  Certainly,"  I  answered.  "  Wouldn't  you  ?  For  one  thing, 
it  will  be  the  greatest  fun  in  the  world  to  have  a  newly 
married  couple  to  study." 

"Cynic!  What  do  you  call  newly  married  couple  to 
study?" 

"  How  old  is  Joyce  ?"  I  retorted. 

Joyce,  I  may  add  —  as  Perdita  declined  to  answer  —  is 
eight,  and  is  just  gone  to  boarding-school. 

61 


AN   OLD   COUNTRY    HOUSE 

So  it  befell,  as  a  result  of  this  breakfast-table  dialogue, 
that  Perdita's  Lovers  came  down  to  stay  with  us  three  or 
four  days  later. 

II 

The  two  "  little  people  "—though  both  old  friends  of  Per- 
dita's— were  as  yet  strangers  to  me.  I  looked  forward  with  a 
certain  amused  curiosity  to  making  their  acquaintance.  Why, 
by-the-way,  do  married  people,  though  they  have  perhaps  only 
been  married  a  year  or  two,  and  are  not  exactly  such  Methuse- 
lahs  themselves,  always  speak  of  young  lovers  such  as  ours 
as  "  little  people,"  and  also  contemplate  them  with  a  lurking 
sense  of  looking  at  a  comedy  ? 

"  What  dear  little  people !"  said  Perdita  and  I  once  more 
to  each  other,  as,  shortly  after  their  arrival,  they  had  gone  up 
to  their  room  to  dress  for  dinner. 

"  Let  me  show  you  to  your  room,"  Perdita  had  said,  with, 
I  thought,  the  most  imperceptible  of  sly  smiles.  I  watched 
their  young  faces.  Their  room !  Bless  them !  Oh,  God  of 
Love !  Oh,  Seventh  Heaven  !  Oh,  Julie  !  Oh,  Lloyd  !  Think 
of  it — their  room  ! 

"  Aren't  they  perfectly  dear  ?"  cried  Perdita,  with  that 
curious,  happy  elation  which  a  woman — though  she  be  merely 
a  bridesmaid  or  a  maiden  aunt  —  feels  in  any  participation, 
however  indirect,  in  the  hymeneal  mysteries. 

"And  how  fascinatingly  young!"  I  chimed  in. 

"  Aren't  they  ?  And  don't  you  think  she's  pretty ;  and 
isn't  he  a  fine  fellow  ?" 

All  of  which  was  quite  true,  though,  as  I  said  to  Perdita, 
it  was  absurd  to  call  them  "  little   people,"  seeing  that  the 

62 


PERDITA'S   LOVERS 

musician  must  stand  at  least  six  feet  two  in  his  stockings— a 
very  viking  of  the  violin — and  that  Julie  stood  far  higher  than 
his  heart. 

"  Never  mind  ;  they  are  '  little  people '  all  the  same — just 
babies." 

"Aren't  we?"  I  asked. 

"  I  didn't  say  we  weren't,"  Perdita  answered. 

"  Meanwhile,  Perdita,"  I  said,  "  they  are  looking  at  each 
other  just  like  this,  and  saying,  '  Isn't  it  wonderful !' " 

"Ah,  poor  children!  they  little  know,"  retorted  Perdita, 
maliciously. 

"  But  you  forget  that  Julie  has  not  married  a  prosaic  being 
like  me,"  I  answered.  "  Think,  dear,  if  you  had  only  married 
a  musician — how  different  your  life  might  have  been  1" 

"  I  do  hope  he  has  brought  his  violin,"  said  Perdita. 

Then  we  too  went  to  dress  for  dinner ;  and  when  I  was 
dressed  I  tapped  on  Perdita's  door,  and  being  allowed  admis- 
sion, I  took  her  hands,  and  looking  into  her  eyes,  said,  softly, 

"  Perdita,  is  it  wonderful  ?" 

"  Idiot,  is  it  wonderful  ?"  she  asked  as  I  kissed  her. 

"And  how  old  did  you  say  Joyce  was?"  I  asked,  and  I 
added,  "  It  will  never  do  for  them  to  think  themselves  the  only 
young  married  couple  in  the  house,  will  it  ?"  .  .  .  Then  holding 
her  at  arm's-length,  and  critically  admiring  the  new  evening 
gown  which  I  knew  she  had  practically  made  for  herself,  "  How 
dear  you  look!"  I  said. 

Ill 

If  I  had  really  been  cynical — and  of  course  I  hadn't  been — 
my  last  show  of  cynicism  must  surely  have  passed  away  with 

6? 


AN   OLD   COUNTRY    HOUSE 

the  happy  sight  of  our  two  young  people  at  dinner.  Oh,  it 
was  a  fair  sight !  How  radiantly  reliant  they  looked  in  all  the 
pride  and  perfume  of  their  blossoming  lives  1  Their  joy  shone 
about  them,  literally  filling  the  room  with  light ;  it  made  a 
sweet  atmosphere  of  spring-time,  like  a  hawthorn-bush  in  its 
first  milky  abundance  of  bloom.  Yes,  it  is  a  wonderful  thing 
to  marry  the  woman  you  love.  No  wonder  the  musician 
looked  like  a  newly  crowned  king,  and  Julie,  like  her  name,  a 
fay  with  the  morning-star  in  her  hair.  But  it  was  soon  evi- 
dent that  she  had  the  sprightliness  as  well  as  the  beauty  of 
her  race.  She  was  not  one  of  your  sad  little  sighing  fairies 
who  can  only  talk  moon-beams.  By  no  means.  She  had  the 
humor  as  well  as  the  beauty  of  a  fairy.  And  she  had,  too,  an 
impulsive  naivete  of  appeal  which  made  her  at  home  with 
you  in  a  moment,  and  caused  me  to  ask  her  if  she  were  not 
an  Irishwoman  —  which  it  turned  out  she  was,  on  that  dear, 
naughty,  wise  old  mother's  side. 

It  made  us  both  happy  to  see  how  evidently  our  young 
lovers  felt  themselves  in  their  own  atmosphere.  Almost  liter- 
ally you  could  see  them  taking  long  breaths  of  it.  Poor  chil- 
dren !  It  was  so  wonderful,  I  dare  say,  to  find  themselves 
with  two  grown-up  people  who  knew  all  about  it — two  old- 
established  dreamers,  who  had  not  forgotten  their  dreams. 
They  were  as  eagerly  grateful  to  us  as  though  they  had  taken 
sanctuary  with  us  from  a  pursuing,  unsympathetic  world. 

With  the  most  winning  grace,  Julie  impulsively  stretched 
out  her  hand  and  laid  it  on  Perdita's.  "  Don't  laugh  at  us,  dear, 
for  being  so  happy — but  really  we  are  so  happy!  And  you 
know  what  we've  gone  through — haven't  we,  Lloyd  ?" 

At  this  the  serious  young-husband  lines  already  forming 
about  the  musician's  mouth  deepened  a  moment.    Then  he 

64 


PERDITA'S   LOVERS 


65 


AN    OLD    COUNTRY   HOUSE 

smiled  at  her — a  smile  to  break  your  heart.  Is  there  anything 
more  terribly  beautiful  than  the  love  of  two  young  people  who 
are  literally  all  the  earth  and  all  the  heaven  to  each  other  ? 

"  Yes,  dear,"  said  Perdita,  sympathetically,  "  but  it  will  all 
come  right." 

"  It  has  come  rignt,  don't  you  think  ?"  I  added,  with  my 
eyes  on  the  Two  Shining  Ones— a  remark  which  won  me  a 
beaming  smile  of  gratitude  from  Julie. 

"  Indeed  it  has,"  she  said ;  "  hasn't  it,  Lloyd  ?" 

It  was  pretty  to  see  how  the  young  bride  nearly  always 
concluded  her  remarks  with  some  such  deferential  appeal  to 
"  Lloyd  ":  "  Isn't  it  so,  Lloyd  ?"  or,  "  Don't  you  agree  with  me, 
Lloyd  ?"  or,  "  Lloyd  thinks  so  too— don't  you,  Lloyd  ?" 

Ah !  the  present  writer  was  once  a  similar  Rock  of  All 
Strength  and  Well  of  All  Wisdom  for  a  brief  enchanted  season 
in  a  certain  young  wife's  eyes.  But  since  then  the  deferential 
formula  has  changed  sides,  and  nowadays  it  runs :  "  I  think 
Perdita  agrees  with  me  too,"  or,  "  What  do  you  say,  Perdita  ?" 
or,  "This  is,  of  course,  only  my  opinion.     Ask  Perdita!" 

Presently,  as  we  grew  more  and  more  at  home  together, 
we  encouraged  our  little  people  to  tell  us  of  their  plans,  and  I 
wouldn't  be  surprised  if  there  were  tears  in  our  eyes  as  Julie 
explained  to  us  the  wondrous  life  they  proposed  to  live  on 
some  three  hundred  pounds  a  year. 

"  You  know  we  are  exquisitely  poor,"  she  said.  "  But  then, 
after  all,  if  two  people  who  love  each  other  cannot  be  happy  on 
three  hundred  pounds  a  year,  they  don't  deserve  to  be  happy," 
she  added,  with  decision. 

I  couldn't  help  thinking,  "It  depends  how  happy  you  want 
to  be!"     But  I  kept  so  base  a  thought  to  myself. 

"Of  course,"  Julie  continued,     our  little  flat  is  the  tiniest 

66 


PERDITA'S   LOVERS 

thing  in  the  world.  Poor  Lloyd  can  hardly  stand  up  in  it,  can 
you,  Lloyd  ?  Just  love  in  a  cottage — or,  rather,  love  in  a  four- 
roomed  flat — with  a  bath.  Lloyd  had  to  have  a  room  to  do 
his  work  in,  you  know,  or  we  might  have  managed  with 
three.  .  .  ." 

At  this  Lloyd  looked  unutterable  masterpieces — and  so 
the  happy  dream-talk  prattled  on  and  on. 

"  I  hope  Lloyd  has  brought  his  violin,"  suggested  Perdita, 
presently. 

"  Indeed  he  has !"  said  Julie,  with  adoring  eyes  upon  the 
young  maestro.     "  He  couldn't  be  happy  anywhere  without  it." 

So,  of  course,  Lloyd  played  for  us  in  the  drawing-room  after 
dinner,  and  Perdita  assured  me  that  he  played  with  something 
like  genius.  As  for  me,  to  my  own  shame,  I  must  confess  a 
limitation.  Music  is  one  of  the  many  languages  which  I  don't 
understand.  1  am  sure  that  Lloyd  played  divinely,  but,  like 
Julie's  father,  I'm  afraid  I  don't  properly  appreciate  musicians — 
I  mean,  of  course,  as  musicians.  As  a  mere  man,  Lloyd  was  all 
you  could  wish.  The  only  barrier  between  us  was  his  music, 
and  as,  after  the  manner  of  true  artists,  his  interests  were  al- 
most entirely  confined  to  his  art — and,  of  course,  Julie— our 
intercourse  was  not  as  intimate  as  I  should  have  wished.  To 
have  a  musician  as  your  guest,  when  you  yourself  know  noth- 
ing of  music,  is  much  as  though  you  should  invite  a  Russian  to 
spend  a  few  days  with  you — without  knowing  a  word  of 
Russian.  Yet,  as  people  speaking  different  languages  manage  to 
communicate  with  each  other  by  means  of  signs,  so  Lloyd  and 
I  managed  to  pick  up  a  sort  of  acquaintance,  and  I  venture  to 
believe  took  quite  a  hearty  liking  for  each  other.  And  I  need 
not  say  that  I  listened  to  Lloyd's  performances  in  his  unknown 

67 


AiN   OLD   COUNTRY   HOUSE 

tongue  with  all  those  airs  of  eager  reverence  which  the  non- 
musical  auditor  of  music  invariably  assumes — in  pathetic  igno- 
rance of  the  fact  that  no  true  lover  of  music  ever  looks  so  un- 
comfortably enraptured.  It  is  curious  how  difficult  it  is  to  lie 
successfully  about  the  arts.  It  takes  an  exceedingly  clever  man 
to  look  as  though  he  has  read  a  book  which  he  really  hasn't 
read,  and  I  almost  think  it  still  harder  to  look  as  if  you  are  en- 
joying music  when  really  you  are  not. 

Of  course  I  knew  that  Lloyd  was  not  taken  in  by  my  pain- 
ful attitudes  of  appreciation,  any  more  than  I  would  have  been 
had  he  pretended  to  admire  some  fine  passage  in  my  favorite 
poet.  I  felt  half  inclined  to  try  him,  say,  with  one  of  Shake- 
speare's sonnets,  and  see  how  he  would  listen  to  that  music. 

Shall  I  compare  thee  to  a  summer's  day  ? 

Thou  art  more  lovely  and  more  temperate  : 
Rough  winds  do  shake  the  darling  buds  of  May, 

And  summer's  lease  hath  all  too  short  a  date.   .   .   . 

"Ah,  what  is  a  violin  compared  with  that?"  I  would  have 
liked  to  ask.  In  fact,  later  on,  I  did  make  just  that  quotation 
and  ask  that  very  question  of  Perdita.  My  insensibility  to 
music  is  perhaps  our  only  dividing-line. 

She  replied:  "You  have  no  ear  for  music,  dear!  Why 
parade  your  infirmity?"  Then  suddenly  she  remarked, 
"Listen  .  .  ." 

The  violin  was  somewhere  in  the  garden,  out  under  the 
harvest-moon.  We  had  thought  our  young  people  safe  in  bed, 
for  they  had  taken  their  candles  fully  half  an  hour  ago. 

Perdita  threw  open  the  lattice  arfd  listened.  I  looked  over 
her  shoulder.  The  garden  lay  in  a  dream,  all  shadows  and 
silver.    There  was  no  one  to  be  seen,  but,  hidden  somewhere 

68 


PERDITA'S   LOVERS 

in  one  of  the  shrubberies,  a  violin  was  singing  like  a  night- 
ingale. I  confess  that  it  sounded  mysteriously  beautiful,  and  I 
listened  as  intently  as  Perdita.  Presently  it  ceased,  and  two  fig- 
ures came  out  of  the  shadow  and  stood  looking  up  at  the  stars. 
"Shall  I  tell  you  what  they  are  saying?"  I  whispered  to 
Perdita — 

••  '  On  such  a  night.   .  .   .'  " 

and 

.  .  ."'Look  how  the  floor  of  heaven 
Is  thick  inlaid  with  patens  of  bright  gold.'" 


IV 


Next  evening,  in  the  high-strung  moments  just  before  the 
dinner-gong,  I  chanced  to  be  , alone  with  Julie  in  Perdita's 
study.     Perdita  and  Lloyd  had  not  yet  come  down. 

Julie  had  been  looking  over  Perdita's  bookshelves  with 
natural  envy.  "Don't  you  think,"  she  said,  "it  would  be 
worth  while  marrying  if  only  just  to  read  aloud  of  an  even- 
ing in  the  lamplight?" 

"It  depends  which  of  you  reads  aloud,"  I  couldn't  help 
saying. 

"No,  but  really,  don't  you  like  reading  aloud?"  asked 
Julie,  smiling,  to  show  that  she  had  not  missed  the  joke. 

"Very  much." 

"Doesn't  Perdita?" 

"Not  quite  so  much  as  I  do — for  the  simple  reason  that  I 
always  do  the  reading.  Haven't  you  noticed,  Julie,  that  the 
world  is  divided  into  two  classes:  those  who  love  reading 
aloud,  and  those  who  don't?  Those  who  don't  are  those 
who  are  compelled  to  listen." 

69 


AN   OLD   COUNTRY    HOUSE 

"Hush!"  said  Julie,  with  a  charming  gesture  of  disap- 
proval. "You  know  well  enough  what  I  mean.  .  .  .  Perdita 
will  agree  with  me,  1  know,  and  here  she  is!" 

Of  course  Perdita  agreed— bless  her!— and,  so  encouraged, 
Julie  continued: 

"  Lloyd  and  I  have  started  to  read  Chaucer  aloud  together. 
We  are  just  in  the  middle  of  the  Prologue.  Of  course  we 
haven't  had  much  time—"  she  continued,  with  a  blush. 

"How  far  did  we  get  with  Dante?"  I  asked  Perdita, 
gravely. 

In  the  nick  of  time  Lloyd  entered  the  room,  and  we  went 
in  to  dinner. 

This  little  conversation  was  but  one  of  many  which  made 
Perdita  and  me  look  at  each  other  furtively  now  and  again, 
with  a  look  which  I  can  only  call  the  "initiated  look" — a 
look  which  said,  "Do  you  remember?"  and  which  said,  too, 
"Is  our  love  any  less  because  it  has  changed,  developed,  lost 
some  of  its  self-consciousness,  made  itself  more  at  home  with 
us,  become  day  by  day  more  of  a  certainty,  less  and  less  a 
mere  promise,  more  and  more  a  promise  fulfilled?" 

We  sometimes  thought  we  saw  a  look  in  the  eyes  of  our 
young  lovers  which  seemed  to  say  that  we  were  perhaps  a 
little  casual  with  the  mysteries,  took  them  too  much  for 
granted,  didn't  appreciate  with  sufficient  awe  the  heaven  we 
lived  in.  So  an  acolyte  may  criticise  an  old  priest  for  his 
familiar  way  with  the  sacred  vessels,  or  remark  upon  an 
omitted  genuflection.  But  not  till  the  acolyte  has  been  a 
servant  of  the  altar  as  long  as  the  old  priest  will  he  under- 
stand that  the  old  priest's  way  with  the  vessels  means  but  a 
deeper  knowledge  of  and  reverence  for  the  mysteries  they 
represent. 

70 


PERDITA'S   LOVERS 


Young  married  people  are  naturally  ritualistic  in  their 
manners  towards  each  other.  To  marry  has  been  a  very 
solemn  thing  to  them— as  it  is  to  all  of  us — and  they  are  still 
a  little  frightened;  particularly  when,  like  our  two  young 
lovers,  they  have  run  away  from  established  authority. 
Besides,  their  happiness  is  such  that  they  dare  not  believe 
it  real.  If  they  speak  above  a  hushed  whisper,  who  knows 
but  that  it  will  suddenly  vanish  away?  It  seems  a  thing 
intended  for  heaven.  How,  then,  can  they  assume  that  it 
has  every  chance  of  becoming  prosperously  established  on 
earth,  and  that,  indeed,  in  course  of  time  it  may  go  abroad 
in  a  carriage  and  pair  ? 

Young  lovers,  like  all  dreamers,  fear  the  world.  They  hold 
each  other  close  and  listen.  Any  moment  may  bring  the 
lightning.    Asr  after  a  while,  the  lightning  doesn't  come,  and 

71 


AN   OLD    COUNTRY   HOUSE 

as,  after  repeated  cross-examination,  they  have  become  com- 
paratively sure  that  they  really  do  love  each  other  still — well, 
Julie  dares  leave  Lloyd's  arms  long  enough  to  pay  a  visit  to 
the  kitchen,  and  Lloyd  thinks  that  perhaps  he  may  practise 
half  an  hour  on  his  violin  without  any  risk  of  Julie's  being 
spirited  away.  So  at  length,  day  by  day,  the  leisurely  proc- 
esses of  lasting  love  become  revealed  to  these  young  people, 
who  once  used  to  kiss  in  such  a  hurry  that  you  might  have 
thought  the  end  of  the  world  was  due  in  five  minutes. 

Perdita  and  I  knew  all  this,  for  we  had  been  servants  of  the 
altar  for  nine  years.  So  if  occasionally,  as  I  shall  admit,  the 
somewhat  brand-newness  of  this  young  blessedness  jarred  on 
our  nerves,  we  took  each  other's  hands  on  the  sly,  and  smiled 
understandingly  at  each  other.  As,  for  example,  at  Lloyd's 
pontifical  way  of  saying  "  my  wife  " !  You  would  have  thought 
that  no  one  in  the  world  had  ever  owned  a  wife  before.  "  My 
wife"  he  was  always  saying,  as  though  he  were  saying  the 
responses  in  the  litany.  Now  Perdita  and  I  call  each  other 
casually  by  our  Christian  names,  and  I  don't  think  that,  except 
in  occasional  legal  documents,  do  I  ever  refer  to  Perdita  as  my 
wife.  But  with  Lloyd,  of  course,  it  was  different.  He  had  only 
been  married  a  week. 

The  other  night  we  sat  out  in  the  garden  a  little  late,  and 
it  grew  somewhat  chilly.  Lloyd  disappeared  into  the  house  a 
moment,  and  reappeared  with  a  shawl  for  Julie. 

"  Forgive  me,"  he  said,  "  but  my  wife  soon  takes  cold."  • 

Indeed,  he  was  always  running  around  with  wraps  and 
things  for  "  my  wife."  I  know  it  was  childish  of  me  to  feel 
irritated,  and  Perdita  and  I  laughed  over  it  later  on. 

"You  know  you  used  to  be  just  the  same,"  she  said, 
slyly. 

72 


PERDITA'S   LOVERS 

"  Would  you  like  me  to  be  like  that  now  ?"  I  asked. 
"  No !"  she  answered,  promptly. 
"What  does  it  begin  with?"  1  said,  in  a  whisper. 
"  W,"  she  answered,  putting  her  head  on  my  shoulder. 
"  And  end  with  ?" 
"E." 

Then  presently  she  asked,  shyly,  of  me,  "  What  does  it 
begin  with  ?" 

"  H,"  I  answered,  manfully. 
"  And  end  with  ?" 
"  D." 


Many  another  such  incident  during  the  visit  of  our  young 
people  illustrated  the  kind  of  imaginative  pleasure,  apart  from 
the  social  pleasure  of  four  people  who  liked  each  other  being 
together,  which  our  guests  found  in  staying  with  us,  and  which 
we  found  in  their  being  with  us.  They  enjoyed  us  because,  in 
a  relative  way,  we  embodied  their  future ;  we  enjoyed  them 
because  they  brought  back  our  past.  We  had  done  what  they 
were  still  dreaming  of,  and  that  dream-look  in  their  eyes  took 
us  back  to  the  days  when  all  was  a  dream  with  us  as  well, 
and  all  was  still  to  do. 

As  they  walked  our  garden  they  said  to  each  other,  "  We, 
too,  will  have  a  garden  some  day." 

And,  as  we  watched  them,  we  said  to  each  other,  "  Do  you 
remember  how  once  we  dreamed  of  a  garden,  and  how  won- 
derful it  was  to  have  our  own  crocuses  ?" 

As  they  took  part  in  the  nursery  revels,  their  eyes  said  to 
each  other,  "We,  too,  will  have  a  nursery  some  day." 

And,  as  we  watched  them,  our  eyes  said  to  each  other: 

73 


AN    OLD    COUNTRY   HOUSE 

"  Do  you  remember  ?  How  strange  it  would  be  if  there  were 
no  Joyce  and  no  Freya!" 

So  all  the  while  we  were  unconsciously  exchanging  our 
dreams — their  dreams  of  the  future  for  our  dreams  of  the  past. 

There  are  few  more  delightful  services  done  by  one  friend 
to  another  than  such  rejuvenation  of  the  past  as  our  young 
people  brought  us.  Dreams,  however  wonderful  and  close  to 
the  heart,  have  a  terrible  way  of  forgetting  they  were  once 
dreams,  as  soon  as  they  are  fulfilled.  They  either  petrify 
into  duties,  or  settle  down  into  habits.  The  most  vital  dream 
is  to  some  degree  subject  to  the  operation  of  use  and  wont. 
Dreams  rest  on  their  laurels,  and  even  nod  over  them.  Most 
welcome,  therefore,  is  the  reveille  of  some  young  dreamer,  who, 
when  maybe  the  somnolence  of  accomplishment  is  stealing  over 
you,  suddenly  takes  you  by  the  shoulder  and  awakens  you  to 
all  the  marvel  of  your  lot— so  that  again,  like  the  old  poet,  you 
exclaim, 

"What  wondrous  life  is  this  I  lead  !" 

To  be  married— instead  of  stolen  meetings,  or  other  in- 
adequate superintended  intercourse — to  have  all  your  days  and 
hours  and  minutes  to  spend  together  as  you  please ;  not  to 
have  to  think,  "  To-day  is  Monday,  we  can't  meet  again  till 
Wednesday,"  but  to  know  that  you  have  only  to  open  your 
eyes  and  she  is  there,  but  to  reach  out  your  hand  and  you 
can  touch  her ;  to  know  that,  though  she  is  out  of  your  sight, 
she  is  still  to  be  found  in  the  next  room  ;  to  know  that  your 
love,  after  many  wanderings  and  vicissitudes,  has  at  last  come 
to  live  under  the  same  roof.  Ah,  to  be  married!  To  marry 
the  woman  you  love! 

But  then,  after  a  miracle  has  gone  on  for  nine  years,  it  is 
only  human  of  you  if  you  sometimes  take  it  a  little  for  granted, 

74 


PERDITA'S   LOVERS 

without  meaning  any  irreverence,  and,  as  Carlyle  said,  "  live  at 
ease  in  the  midst  of  wonders." 

Since  our  friends  have  left  us,  Perdita  and  I — in  the  ab- 
surdity of  our  young  hearts — have  invented  a  new  game,  which 
we  call  the  game  of  the  Clandestine  Meetings.  You  play  it 
like  this  (of  course  you  understand  that  it  is  only  a  game  for 
old  married  people): 

With  the  utmost  secrecy  I  arrange  for  the  delivery  of  a 
letter  which  shall  be  given  into  Perdita's  own  hands — and  on 
no  account  fall  into  mine — a  letter  running  something  like  this : 

"  Little  Star-girl, — Can  you  meet  me  at  nine  to-night  in  the  meadow, 

under  our  elm-tree  ?    Take  care  how  you  come,  for  I  have  reason  to  think 

that  we  are  watched.     I  will    wait   an   hour.     Don't   be   unhappy   if  you 

cannot   come  —  I   mean    unhappy  for  keeping  me  waiting.     I    shall   know 

you   are   prevented,  for  I  know  you   will  come  if  you   can.     But,   oh,   be 

there,  won't  you  ? 

"Your  own  True  Lover." 

This  letter  being  duly  delivered,  Perdita  and  I  meet  to- 
gether over  dinner,  as  usual,  but,  as  the  clock  turns  half-past 
eight,  we  grow  a  little  nervous  and  consequently  fidgety. 

"  I'm  so  sorry,  dear,  but  I  think  I  must  go  and  finish  that 
chapter,"  1  may  say.    "  I  had  bad  luck  with  it  to-day." 

'"  Never  mind,  dear,"  Perdita  will  say,  with  unspeakable 
cunning ;  "  I  have  to  go  up  into  the  nursery  for  a  while. 
Freya's  chest  is  making  me  quite  anxious." 

"Poor  little  thing!"  say  I.     "Shall  I  come  and  kiss  her?" 

"No,  dear;  she's  a  little  feverish;  it  will  only  excite  her. 
Go  and  get  on  with  your  chapter." 

So  we  part. 

Half  an  hour  later,  Perdita,   inhumanly  neglectful   of  her 

1% 


AN   OLD   COUNTRY    HOUSE 

motherly  duties,  may  be  perceived  stealing  along  the  shadowy 
edges  of  the  moonlit  garden.  She  opens  the  little  wicket  into 
the  park,  and  soon,  with  a  cry  of  joy,  we  are  in  each  other's 
arms  there  under  the  great  elm-tree. 

"Oh,  I  hope  you  won't  catch  cold,  dear.  What  have  you 
got  on  your  feet?  Your  in-door  slippers!  Oh,  you  baby! 
Why,  your  stockings  must  be  wet  through.  Oh,  Perdita, 
Perdita!  How  wonderful  it  is  to  see  you  again!  But,  child, 
how  long  is  this  to  go  on  ?     I  can't  bear  it." 

"Nor  can  I,"  sighs  Perdita. 

Then  presently  Perdita  adds:  "I  think  we  might  dine 
together  to-morrow  night,  if  you  care. .  I  have  to  go  to  town 
to  do  some  shopping,  and  I  shall  be  staying  with  dear  Sissie 
— you  know  ?     Couldn't  we  manage  it  ?" 

"You  darling!  Where  shall  we  meet?  The  Comedy?  At 
seven?  Oh,  what  a  surprise!  Oh,  Perdita!  Are  you  quite 
sure,  sure  you  will  be  there — sure  it  will  be  all  right  ?" 

"Perfectly.  And  now  you  must  let  me  go.  Listen — the 
church  clock  is  striking  ten.  Good-bye,  dear — oh,  good-bye. 
To-morrow — don't  forget — seven  at  the  Comedy.  Good- 
night." 

•  "Let  me  carry  you  over  the  grass — just  over  to  that 
shadow — please  do.  It  will  be  all  the  better  for — your 
slippers." 

"All  right,  little  child.  Now,  good-night!  .  .  .  O  love! 
good-morrow !" 

A  little  later  I  will  sleepily  stroll  into  Perdita's  study,  and 
find  her  innocently  occupied  with  a  book. 

"How  is  poor  little  Freya?"  I  will  ask. 

"Oh,  she  is  much  better.  I  think  she  will  be  all  right 
to-morrow.  .  .  .  And  how  about  the  chapter?"   Perdita  will 

76 


PERDITA'S   LOVERS 

ask,  with  what  I  may  perhaps  call  the  delicate  threat  of  a 
smile. 

"All  but  finished,"  1  will  answer.  Then,  somewhat  tim- 
orously, I  will  add,  "I  don't  think,  dear,  that  I  told  you  that  I 
am  going  to  town  to-morrow." 

"No,  you  didn't,"  Perdita  will  answer,  somewhat  frostily. 
"But,"  she  will  continue,  "I  didn't  tell  you  that  I  am  going 
too." 

"Oh,  that's  fortunate!"  I  will  retort,  with  a  feeble  effort  at 
dissimulation.  "Suppose  we  go  together.  We  can  part  at 
Waterloo,  you  know — if  you  wish  it." 

So  next  afternoon,  both  of  us  being  a  little  in  need  of  the 
town,  we  catch  the  3.40  train  together,  and  as  soon  as  we 
arrive  at  Waterloo  we  ostentatiously  take  cabs  in  opposite 
directions. 

"Give  my  love  to  Sissie,"  I  will  say. 

"  Please  remember  me  to  Jim,"  Perdita  will  answer. 

I  will  first  drive  to  our  little  Comedy  restaurant,  and  re- 
serve our  own  historical  little  corner  table,  and  then  go  on  to 
the  florist  for  a  bunch  of  our  own  flowers.  Punctually  at  seven 
I  will  be  seated  at  our  table,  cutting  the  leaves  of  some  new 
edition  de  luxe,  which  I  have  brought  as  a  souvenir  for 
Perdita — just  as  we  used  to  do.  She  will  come  in,  ten  or 
twelve  minutes  late,  with  a  flush  of  escape  in  her  face. 

"Do  forgive  me,  dear,"  she  will  say.  "I  had  such  a  time 
getting  away.  I  almost  thought  I  wouldn't  be  able  to  come 
at  all." 

Then  the  waiter,  who  has  watched  our  love  at  dinner  for 
something  like  ten  years,  will  come  to  us,  with  one  of  those 
smiles  with  which  a  waiter  who  is  at  the  same  time  an  old 
friend  knows  so  well  to  make  you  feel  at  home  in  the  world. 

77 


AN    OLD   COUNTRY    HOUSE 

Of  course  he  doesn't  know  about  our  little  play-acting.  He 
assumes  that  we  are  married. 

"We  have  one  of  madame's  favorite  dishes  to-night,"  he 
will  say. 

"Don't  speak  too  loud,  William,"  I  will  say,  with  a  smile; 
and  you  may  be  sure  that  I  am  not  going  to  tell  here  what 
Perdita  loves  to  eat  better  than  anything  in  the  world. 

"What  shall  we  drink,  dear?"  I  ask.  "Suppose  we  try 
some  Rudesheimer?" 

"Yes,  let  us,"  Perdita  will  answer. 

"You  are  quite  sure  you  wouldn't  like  some  champagne?" 

"Not  for  the  world.  I  thought  you  knew  that  I  hate 
champagne." 

"Forgive  me,  dear.  Rudesheimer,  then.  I  like  nothing 
better." 

Rudesheimer,  I  may  add,  is,  so  to  say,  our  sacerdotal  wine. 
We  have  said  for  ten  years  that  we  have  never  drunk  it  with 
any  one  else,  and  that  we  never  will. 

So,  like  children,  we  make-believe  together  a  past  which, 
thank  God,  is  still  a  living,  loving  present — a  present  which 
we  know  will  grow  into  a  future — a  future  that  we  pray  may 
some  day  become  an  eternity. 

Before  we  part  I  will  say  to  Perdita:  "I  bought  this  book 
for  you  to-day.  You  know  it,  of  course;  but  it  is  such  a 
pretty  edition.  May  1  give  it  to  you  in  memory  of  to- 
night?" 

"Oh,  you  dear!"  she  will  answer;  "but  you  know  you 
cannot  afford  it — any  more  than  I  can  resist  it.  Isn't  it 
beautiful  ?  How  good  of  you !  You  dear  boy !  How  good 
you  are  to  me  —  and  I  don't  believe  I  ever  gave  you  a 
thing!" 

78 


PERDITA'S    LOVERS 

I  look  the  only  possible  answer,  and  Perdita,  thereupon 
giving  me  one  of  her  golden  smiles — all  for  nothing — says, 

"  But  you  must  write  my  name  in  it." 

"  Do  you  think  it  wise  ?"  I  ask.  "  Your  people  are  sure 
to  see." 

"  Nice  people  don't  read  inscriptions  in  gift-books." 

"  It's  true  they  don't — if  they  can  help  it.  But  they  might 
by  accident ;  and  you  know,  little  impulsive  child,  I  have  to 
think  of  you." 

"  Well,  don't  write  our  names,  but  write  something." 

"  Suppose  you  write  what  /  mean — and  then  nobody  can 
be  sure — though  they  may  guess.  You  know  they  know  my 
writing  at  home,  don't  they?"' 

"  All  right.    What  shall  I  write  ?" 

"  Would  you  like  a  poem  ?" 

"  I  have  no  objection." 

"  Have  you  a  pencil  ?" 

"  No." 

"  Never  mind.  William  will  lend  us  one.  .  .  .  Are  you 
ready  ?" 

"  Yes." 

"For  the  Princess  of  the  New-born  Heart  : 

"  Princess  of  the  new-born  heart, 

Of  the  new-born  heart  of  me  ..." 

Then  I  shall  stop  short,  hunting  for  rhymes,  and  perhaps 
finally  give  up  the  chase. 

"  It  is  so  hard  to  write  in  the  immediate  presence  of  the 
Muse,"  I  may  offer  as  a  feeble  excuse. 

"  Never  mind.  Finish  it  later,  and  bring  it  to  me  to- 
morrow." 

79 


AN   OLD   COUNTRY    HOUSE 

"  To-morrow— do  you  really  mean  we  can  meet  again  to- 
morrow ?     Don't  tease  me,  Perdita — you  really  mean  it  ?" 

"  Of  course.  But  how  about  our  theatre  ?  I'm  sure  we 
have  missed  the  first  act.  .  .  ." 

So  Perdita  and  I  play  truant  from  each  other — together. 


VI 


A  few  days  after  our  young  people  left  us,  Perdita,  with  an 
air  of  mystery,  came  to  me  holding  two  or  three  crumpled 
pages  of  manuscript  in  her  hand. 

"  I  have  just  made  a  terrible  discovery,"  she  said. 

"My  dear!" 

"  Or,  rather,  John  "  (the  gardener)  "  has  just  made  it." 

"Go  on." 

"  He  came  to  me  just  now  with  these — which  he  had  found 
in  the  garden ;  and  he  said  that  he  thought  they  might  be  'the 
master's,' but,  dear,  it  is  worse  than  that.  What  do  you  think? 
— Lloyd  is  not  only  a  musician  ;  he  is  a  poet  as  well !  Isn't  it 
terrible  ?     Listen !" 

Thereupon  Perdita  read  from  a  tattered,  rain-soaked  manu- 
script as  follows : 

"  Grace  o'  God, 
Flower  face, 
Silver  feet, 
In  what  place, 
Heaven  or  earth, 
Did  we  meet  ? 
At  what  time 
Of  the  day  ? 
In  what  way  ? 
80 


PERDITA'S   LOVERS 

Was  it  near, 
Was  it  far, 
In  some  star, 
Or  just  here, 
Qyite,  quite  near? 

1  Tell  me,  dear — 
Grace  o'  God, 
Tell  me,  dear. 

"Grace  o'  God, 
I  know  well 
When  we  met ; 
It  was  first, 
Grace  o'  God, 
When  I  knew 
I  loved  you — ■ 
Then  we  met — 
That  was  just, 
Grace  o'  God, 
Flower  face, 
Silver  feet ; 
When  I  first 
Looked — oh,  looked — 
On  your  face- 
Silver  feet, 
Golden  heart, 
Grace  o'  God." 

'fRead  another,"  I  said,  critically.    Then  Perdita  read  this 

"Dear  little  hand  in  mine  I  hold, 
Dear  little  hand  of  molten  gold, 
Dear  great  big  eyes  of  berry  brown — 
The  brownest  eyes  in  all  the  town  ; 
81 


AN   OLD    COUNTRY    HOUSE 


Dear  pattering  walk,  the  timid  bride 
Of  my  long,  slouching,  manly  stride  ; 
Dear  head,  dear  hair,  dear  hands,  dear  feet, 
Dear  love — dear  everything  complete  !" 


"  I  wish  people  wouldn't  leave  poetry  lying  about  like  that — 
such  good  poetry,  I  mean.  I'd  no  idea  that  Lloyd  had  it  in  him," 
I  said,  as  Perdita  finished,  with  evident  pleasure  in  the  verses. 

I  didn't  tell  her — till  some  time  after— that  the  verses  were 
a  part  of  our  Clandestine  Meetings  game,  and  that  I  had  got 
Lloyd  to  write  them  out  for  me  on  the  backs  of  envelopes 

addressed  "Lloyd  ,  Esq.,"  and  that  our  old  friend  John, 

the  gardener,  was  also  in  the  plot.  I  wish,  for  the  sake  of 
my  reputation  with  the  reader,  that  they  were  really  Lloyd's 
verses  instead  of  mine. 

82 


1 


NO  form  of  stage  lends  itself  so  sympathetically  to  play- 
acting as  an  old  garden  ;  and  when  I  say  play-acting  I 
mean  the  word  to  stand  for  any  form  of  fanciful  make-believe 
that  delights  the  heart  of  men  and  women,  that  curious  de- 
light in  "pretending"  which  begins  in  our  earliest  childhood, 
our  very  babyhood,  and  is  never  forfeited  by  any  one  who 
has  really  been  a  child.  For  long  before  a  child  is  instructed 
in  the  mysteries  of  the  alphabet  or  the  multiplication  table 
it  is  initaited  in  the  noble,  consolatory  art  of  make-believe.  If 
the  child  is  a  girl,  she  is  taught  to  nurse  her  own  destiny ;  if 
the  child  is  a  boy,  he  is  taught  to  play  at  soldiers— though 
he  is  as  yet  so  many  years  away  from  a  commission.  No 
wonder  that  the  human  race  produces  such  an  overwhelming 
percentage  of  actors,  when  you  consider  that  the  first  lesson 

85 


AN   OLD   COUNTRY   HOUSE 

we  teach  a  child  is— how  to  pretend  to  be  something  or  some- 
body else. 

And  as  you  grow  up,  as  you  grow  older  and  older,  how 
thankful  you  are  to  the  traditional  nursery  lore  which  has 
thus  implanted  in  you  the  defensive  habit  of  make-believe! 
If  it  had  not  been  for  some  comfortable,  old,  sweet-breathed 
nurse,  with  her  fairy-tales  and  her  nursery  wisdom,  you 
might  have  been  nothing  but  your  dull  self.  But,  thanks  to 
her  and  her  far-sighted  training,  you  have  most  successfully 
pretended  to  be — something  else;  perhaps  a  doctor  or  a 
lawyer. 

But,  leaving  aside  the  useful  learned  "professions" — 
properly  so  called — think  how  much  you  owe  to  the  nursery 
for  a  trick  of  self-comfort,  of  which,  though  you  may  not 
need  to  be  a  soldier,  a  sailor,  or  a  candle-stick  maker,  you 
may  still  stand  some  day  no  less  appealingly  in  need,  for 
the  no  less  practical  purpose  of  self-distraction. 

You  may  only  need  your  trick  of  self-deception  for  your- 
self, merely  to  persuade  you,  say,  that  you  are  living  in 
another  century,  in  another  country,  in  prettier  clothes,  and 
with  more  interesting  people.  The  serious  uses  of  such  self- 
dramatization  I  do  not  propose  to  enlarge  upon  in  this  essay. 
Every  one  knows  that  many  a  bank-clerk  only  gets  through 
his  day's  work  by  dreaming  that  he  is  in  command  of  a 
crack  regiment,  and  that  the  alacrity  of  our  messenger-boys 
is  chiefly  due  to  their  firm  belief  that  they  are  really  burglars 
or  buccaneers.  You  may  not  take  yourself  so  seriously  as 
that,  and  yet  you  may  need  to  "pretend"  all  the  same.  You 
feel  the  need  of — getting  out  of  yourself.  Even  your  doctor 
advises  it.  It  may  seem  a  very  attractive  self  to  others,  yet 
you  want  to  get  out  of  it!    Well,  there  are  many  ways.    One 

86 


PERDITA'S   SIMPLE  CUPBOARD 

of  the  most  satisfactory,  and  one  of  the  prettiest,  is  Perdita's 
way:  to  put  yourself  into  a  garden.  Why  Perdita  should 
need  to  get  away  from  herself  I  cannot  guess — for  I  have 
never  wanted  to  get  away  from  Perdita.  Indeed,  when  1 
come  to  think  of  it,  I  believe  that  Perdita's  gardening — and 
all  the  occult  sciences  which  go  with  it — are  not  so  much 
self-escape  as  self-expression.  Perdita— and  why  not! — is 
really  an  egoist;  and  her  idea  is  to  write  her  name  over  and 
over  again  in  flowers.  If  so,  she  has  certainly  chosen  that 
form  of  page  on  which  one  can  most  legibly  and  lastingly 
write  one's  name— a  page  of  the  good  green  earth;  in  her 
case  only  quite  a  small  page,  a  mere  three  acres  at  most,  yet 
what  clever,  tender  things  she  does  with  it! 

Perdita  is  a  learned  lover  of  our  old  poets— as  we  call 
those  poets  who  are  young  forever — and  one  corner  of  her 
garden,  which  she  calls  the  Poet's  Corner,  she  has  reserved 
for  flowers  mentioned  by  several  poets  whose  original  octavos 
and  even  folios  make  a  cosey  nook  of  warm  old  leather  in 
her  little  library:  a  nook  to  which  her  eyes  turn  always 
with  the  greatest  affection,  particularly  when  the  lamp  has 
been  brought  in  and  the  fire  is  flickering  dreamily  on  their 
friendly  old  faces. 

It  is  one  of  her  truest  pleasures,  and  prettiest  vanities,  to 
take  you  into  the  garden  and  show  you  how  she  has  trans- 
lated one  of  these  musical  old  fellows  into  phlox  and  daffodil 
and  sweet  marjoram.  If  you  want  to  make  Perdita  happy 
you  have  only  to  ask  her  to  be  allowed  to  take  tea  in  the 
garden  of  Herrick's  "Hesperides,"  while  she  turns  over  the 
leaves — I  had  almost  said  petals — of  a  precious  first  edition 
as  yellow  now  as  his  own  daffodils,  yet  no  less  fresh  and 
fragrant. 

87 


AN   OLD    COUNTRY   HOUSE 


fl 


;^T    i 


One  of  these  votive  gardens  to 
which  she  is  particularly  devoted  is 
called  the  "  Garden  of  the  Faithful 
Shepperdess,"  for  here  grow  the  many 
flowers  dear  to  Fletcher,  that  sweet 
lyrist  whose  English  honey  keeps  sweet 
against  decay,  as  no  mere  dramatic 
strength  of  Beaumont  could — that  be- 
loved lumber-room  of  Elizabethan  drama, 
that  apple-loft  of  old  English  pastoral, 
that  vast  old  fireside  folio  of  Beaumont 
and  Fletcher,  which  Charles  Lamb  took 
home  one  night,  with  such  glee,  from 
Barker's  in  Covent  Garden. 

Then  Perdita  has  a  little  garden  for 
Campion  —  he,  you  know,  who  sang, 
"There  is  a  garden  in  her  face" — and 
another  garden  reserved  for  those  flow- 
ers which  deck  the  laureate  hearse 
where  Lycid  lies.  Next  to  Shakespeare, 
no  other  poet  except  Milton  has  made 
flowers  so  much  more  wonderful  than 
they  are — by  the  mere  inspired  mention 
of  their  names. 

Perdita,  like  many  dream-gardeners, 
had  conceived  the  idea  of  a  garden 
in  which  only  Shakespeare's  flowers 
should  be  grown.  But  when  she  came 
to  consider,  she  realized  that  Shake- 
speare had  loved  too  many  flowers  for 
her  to  give  him  a  whole  province  of  her 
88 


PERDITA'S   SIMPLE   CUPBOARD 


limited  space  to  himself.  Taking  further 
thought,  however,  she  came  to  see  that 
the  whole  garden  was  Shakespeare's, 
and  that  there  was  no  flower  in  any 
particular  garden  which  was  not  his  too 
— which  was  not,  indeed,  more  his.  For 
take  the  daffodil.  It  is  true  that  Her- 
rick  had  written : 

"Fair  daffodils,   we  weep  to  see 
You  fade  away  so  soon  " — 

and  that  in  later  days  Wordsworth's 
eyes  and  heart  had  gone  dancing  with 
the  daffodils  in  a  northern  English 
meadow ;  but  before  either  of  them 
Shakespeare  had  noted  how  the  daffodil 

"Comes  before  the  swallow  dares, 
And  takes  the  winds  of  March  with  beauty." 

And  so  with  almost  all  the  other  flowers. 
Shakespeare  had  loved  them  first  and 
sung  them  best.  Except  the  daisy!  Ah, 
yes  I  except  the  daisy — for  is  that  not 
pre-eminently  Chaucer's  flower? — and 
not  even  Shakespeare  himself  can  rob 
him  of  it.  Remembering  this,  Perdita 
had  begged  from  the  gardener  a  corner 
of  the  lawn  "  ypoudred  with  daisy,"  and 
there  the  lawn-mower  never  came — 
only  that  Queen  Alceste  "That  turned 
was  into  a  dayesie."    And  almost  over- 

89 


V^Vl*^  •«*>*• 


t      f-arj\; 


GARDEN  of 

<he  FAJTHFVL 
JHEPPERDEM 


AN   OLD   COUNTRY    HOUSE 

grown  with  the  happy  rioting  grass  was  an  inscription,  like  a 
gardener's  label,  written  in  Perdita's  fine  hand— 

"Every  day  this  May  or  thou  dine 
Go  look  upon  the  fresh  daisie. " 

This,  as  a  charming  American  writer  has  pointed  out,  was  the 
prescription  of  the  nightingale  in  one  of  Chaucer's  most  de- 
lightful poems ;  and  the  writer  adds :  "  A  blessed  pharmacy 
this,  freely  found  in  meadow  and  field." 


II 

This  quotation  brings  me  to  the  more  immediate  subject 
of  my  thoughts,  Perdita's  latest  fancy,  her  "  Physick  Gar- 
den " — Hortus  Medicus  et  Pbilosophicus,  as  the  learned  Joachim 
Camerarius,  physician,  of  the  Republic  of  Nuremberg,  entitled 
his  treatise  upon  healing  herbs  published  at  Frankfort -on- 
Main,  1^88 — a  quaint  little  quarto  of  some  rarity,  which  Per- 
dita  picked  up  from  a  catalogue  a  short  while  ago. 

Sometimes  we  call  this  garden  "The  Astrologer's  Garden," 
for  Perdita  has  taken  pains,  so  far  as  her  astrological  lore  per- 
mits, to  select  her  plants  on  purely  astrological  principles — as 
one  of  her  herbalist  friends,  Nich.  Culpepper,  Gent.,  in  his  Eng- 
lish Physician,  most  urgently  advises.  We  may  need  to  speak 
of  Mr.  Culpepper  later,  but  on  this  point  it  will  be  convenient 
to  quote  him  just  here.  Mr.  Culpepper  has  a  fine,  high-stepping 
contempt  for  his  non-astrological  reader,  as  you  shall  hear : 

"I  shall  deliver  myself  thus  : 
.     "(i)  To  the  Vulgar. 

"  (2)  To  such  as  study  Astrology;  or  such  as  study  Physic  astrologically. 

90 


PERDITA'S   SIMPLE  CUPBOARD 

"  First.  To  the  Vulgar.  Kind  souls,  I  am  sorry  it  hath  been  your  hard 
mishap  to  have  been  so  long  trained  in  such  Egyptian  darkness,  even 
darkness  which  your  sorrow  may  be  felt.  The  vulgar  road  of  physic  is 
not  my  practice;  ...  in  the  mean  season  take  these  few  rules  and  stay 
your  stomachs.  .  .  .  Secondly — To  such  as  study  astrology  (who  are  the 
only  men  I  know  that  are  fit  to  study  physic,  physic  without  astrology 
being  like  a  lamp  without  oil)  you  are  the  men  I  exceedingly  respect,  and 
such  documents  as  my  brain  can  give  vou  at  present  (being  absent  from 
study)  I  shall  give  you." 

Among  the  valuable  hints  which  the  learned  Culpepper 
then  proceeds  to  give,  the  following  as  to  the  proper  time 
for  gathering  simples  is  not  the  least  valuable:  "Let  the 
planet  that  governs  the  herb  be  angular,  and  the  stronger  the 
better;  if  they  can,  in  herbs  of  Saturn,  let  Saturn  be  in  the 
ascendant ;  in  the  herbs  of  Mars,  let  Mars  be  in  the  mid- 
heaven,  for  in  those  houses  they  delight;  let  the  moon  apply 
to  them  by  good  aspect,  and  let  her  not  be  in  the  houses  of 
her  enemies;  if  you  cannot  well  stay  till  she  apply  to  them, 
let  her  apply  to  a  planet  of  the  same  triplicity ;  if  you  cannot 
wait  that  time  neither,  let  her  be  with  a  fixed  star  of  their 
nature;  .  .  .  gather  all  leaves  in  the  hour  of  that  planet  that 
governs  them." 

The  dead  are  seldom  more  pathetically  amusing  than  Nich. 
Culpepper,  Gent.,  but  as  an  authority  upon  a  physic  garden 
he  still  claims  respect,  and,  for  all  his  sententious  airs,  can- 
not be  ignored. 

His  pompous  little  volume  has  its  place  in  Perdita's  shelf- 
garden  of  old  herbals — almost  as  fragrant  a  collection  of  old 
leather  and  copper-plates  as  her  shelf-garden  of  old  poets  ; 
but,  of  course,  the  chief  fragrance  comes  from  the  Gerarde, 
of  which   Perdita  possesses  a  particularly   fine  copy.     How 

9i 


AN    OLD    COUNTRY   HOUSE 

differently  our  men  of  science  write  nowadays!  It  may  be 
that  they  are  more  accurate— but  then  they  are,  oh!  so  much 
duller.  Nowadays  a  botanist,  by  the  river's  brim,  is  just  a 
botanist,  and  he  is  nothing  more.  But  in  the  sixteenth  and 
seventeenth  centuries,  and  even  as  late  as  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury, your  botanist  was  something  of  a  writer,  something  even 
of  a  poet,  too.  Take,  for  instance,  Parkinson's  Herbal,  which 
is  another  of  Perdita's  treasures:  "  T beat  rum  Botanicum — 
The  Theatre  of  Plants — collected  by  the  many  years  travail, 
industry,  and  experience  in  this  subject,  by  John  Parkinson, 
Apothecary  of  London  and  the  King's  Herbarist,  and  Pub- 
lished by  the  King's  Majestyes  Especial  Priviledge,  London. 
Printed  by  Iho  Cotes,  1640."  Listen  how  Parkinson  opens 
his  first  chapter  on  "  Sweete  Smelling  Herbes — the  First  Tribe": 

"  From  a  Paradise  of  pleasant  flowers  I  am  fallen  (Adam 
like)  to  a  world  of  profitable  Herbes  and  Plants  (ut  omne  tulit 
punctum  qui  miscuit  utile  dulci)  namely  those  Plants  that  are 
frequently  used  to  helpe  the  diseases  of  our  bodies."  Where 
will  you  find  a  modern  botanist  writing  as  prettily  as  that? 
Can  the  reason  be  that  the  modern  botanist  has  lost  his 
faith  in  Adam  ? 

Take  a  still  rarer  volume  on  Perdita's  shelf — (I  may  say 
that  she  pays  for  these  bibliophilic  treasures  quite  legiti- 
mately from  the  profits  of  her  bee-hives  and  poultry-yard) — 
a  translation  by  one  Henry  Lite  of  "A  New  Herball,  or  His- 
torie  of  Plants  .  .  .  (London:  1619),  not  long  sithence  set 
forth  in  the  Almaigne  or  Dutch  tongue  by  that  painfull  and 
learned  Physition,  D.  Rembert  Dodoens."  It  is  a  delicious 
little  folio  in  the  prettiest  black  letter,  and,  dipping  at  random 
into  it,  you  can  find  such  charmingly  imparted  information 
as  this:  "Of  Serpent's  Tongue,  or  Adder's  Tongue:  This  leafe 

92 


PERDITA'S   SIMPLE   CUPBOARD 


9* 


AN    OLD   COUNTRY   HOUSE 

is  found  with  his  little  tongue  in  Aprill  and  May:  the  whole 
hearbe  vanisheth  away  in  June." 

Here  are  two  more  titles  and  title-pages  from  Perdita's 
herbal  corner: 

"Adam  in  Eden:  or  Natures  Paradise— The  History  of 
Plants,  Fruits,  Herbs  and  Flowers  with  their  several  names.  .  .  . 

"A  Work  of  such  a  Refined  and  Useful  Method  that  the 
Arts  of  Physick  and  Chirurgerie  are  so  clearly  laid  open 
that  Apothecaries,  Chirurgioes,  and  all  other  ingenuous  Prac- 
titioners may  from  our  own  Fields  and  Gardens,  best  agree- 
ing with  our  English  Bodies,  on  emergent  and  sudden  occa- 
sions compleatly  furnish  themselves  with  cheap,  easie  and 
wholesome  Cures  for  any  part  of  the  Body  that  is  ill-affected. 

"By  William  Coles,  Herbarist. 

"London:  Printed  by  J.  Streater,  for  Nathaniel  Brooke  at 
the  Angel  in  Cornhill,  near  the  Royal  Exchange,  1657." 

"  A  Curious  Herbal,  Containing  Five  Hundred  Cuts— of  the 
most  Useful  Plants,  which  are  now  used  in  the  Practice  of 
Physick. 

"Engraved  on  folio  Copper  Plates,  after  Drawings  taken 
from  the  Life  of  Elizabeth  Blackwell. 

"To  which  is  added  a  short  Description. of  ye  Plants  and 
their  common  Uses  in  Physick. 

"London:  Printed  by  John  Nourse,  at  the  Lamb  without 
Temple  Bar.    mdccxxxix." 

Though  Perdita  tries  to  make  you  believe  that  she  takes 
her  Physic-garden  seriously  from  a  medicinal  point  of  view, 
and  is  prepared  to  vindicate  the  hedge-row  pharmacy  of  the 

94 


PERDITA'S   SIMPLE   CUPBOARD 

old  wives  of  the  country-side,  yet  1  am  sure  it  is  the 
haunted  names  of  the  various  old  romantic  weeds  rather 
than  their  medicinal  virtues  that  prompt  her  to  spend  whole 
days  in  following  up  the  waifs  and  strays  of  the  highways 
and  waste-places,  and  persuading  them  to  accept  a  com- 
fortable home  and  live  a  respectable  life  in  her  garden.  Some 
are  glad  of  the  good  food  she  gives  them,  and  the  freedom 
from  vegetable  strife,  but  many  others  seem  incorrigibly  de- 
voted to  a  vagabond  existence  and  sicken  in  their  polite 
surroundings. 

Plants  whose  very  names  made  the  blood  of  our  an- 
cestors run  cold  are  to  be  found  in  Perdita's  garden,  side  by 
side  with  sober-coated  pot-herbs 'put  to  no  more  dangerous 
uses  than  the  stuffing  of  turkeys  or  the  seasoning  of  omelets. 
There  grow  the  roots  "that  take  the  reason  prisoner"— hem- 
lock and  henbane  and  hellebore;  vervain  and  rue  and 
many  another  unholy  ingredient  of  the  witches'  caldron; 
and  Perdita  particularly  congratulates  herself  on  her  man- 
dragora  bed.  Strictly  speaking,  as  the  reader  must  be  aware, 
the  mandrake  will  only  grow  under  a  gallows-tree,  for  it  finds 
its  most  sustaining  nutriment  in  the  juices  that  drip  and  drip 
from  the  bodies  of  decayed  murderers.  Its  fat,  fleshlike  root 
is  said  to  be  shaped  like  a  man,  but  in  this  particular  Perdita 
has  been  disappointed,  as,  indeed,  Gerarde  was  before  her.  "  I 
myselfe  and  my  servannts  also  have  digged  up,  planted  and 
replanted  verie  many;  and  yet  never  could  either  perceive 
shape  of  man  and  woman,"  says  the  old  herbalist,  in  disgust 
with  those  "idle  drones"  that  have  nothing  better  to  do  but 
circulate  such  idle  superstitions.  At  the  same  time,  Perdita 
is  inclined  to  hold  it  true  that  mandrakes  are  to  be  found 
most  plentifully  under  the  shade  of  some  old  gallows-tree, 

95 


AN   OLD   COUNTRY   HOUSE 

or  on  its  site.  Else,  why  should  the  hill  close  by  us  on  the 
high-road,  known  as  "Gallows  Hill,"  be  the  one  spot  all  the 
country  round  where  she  has  found  the  ill-famed  vegetable 
growing.  It  is  known  without  a  doubt  from  current  tradition 
that  "Gallows  Hill"  is  well  manured  with  the  bodies  of 
departed  highwaymen,  and  there  are  very  old  people  still 
living  who  have  seen  the  moon  through  the  ribs  of  emaciated 
malefactors,  and  heard  their  chains  creaking  and  whimpering 
on  windy  nights.  One  of  the  scarred  and  shattered  old  trees 
has  a  rusty  chain  hanging  to  it  to  this  day,  and  it  was  beneath 
this  very  tree  that  Perdita  found  her  first  mandrake.  She 
was  no  little  afraid  of  uprooting  it,  because,  as  you  know, 
the  mandrake  in  old  times,  when  uprooted,  used  to  give 
forth  strange  groans  and  screams  as  of  a  human  being  in 
agony.  However,  in  this  respect  our  mandrakes  were  a  dis- 
appointment. They  came  up  out  of  the  ground  quietly  enough, 
and  took  kindly  to  the  corner  provided  for  them  in  the  Hortus 
Medicas  et  Philosophicus.  Perhaps  they  have  grown  milder 
with  the  more  peaceful  times.  It  is  so  long  since  they  had 
a  taste  of  highwayman. 

Plants  less  darkly  associated  with  forbidden  mysteries,  yet 
powerful  to  possess  the  mind  of  man  with  a  madness  no  less 
desperate,  "the  cruel  madness  of  love,"  grow,  too,  in  Perdita's 
garden  —  for  love-philters  are  a  branch  of  country  medicine 
which  Perdita  has  made  a  special  study.  Two  of  the  wicked 
plants  already  named,  vervain  and  mandrake,  are  known  to 
wield  strange  power  over  the  affections.  Rosemary  and  the 
innocent  thyme  also  turn  the  heads  and  hearts  of  man  and 
maid,  particularly  when  used  on  St.  Agnes's  Eve.  Basil,  purs- 
lane, cumin-seed  and  cyclamen,  wormwood  and  marjoram,  are 
strong  ingredients  of  the  magic  loving-cup,  as  likewise  are 

96 


PERDITA'S   SIMPLE   CUPBOARD 


97 


AN   OLD   COUNTRY   HOUSE 

the  simple -sounding  pansy,  crocus,  periwinkle,  mallow,  and 
marigold. 

I  sometimes  feel  a  little  shiver  as  I  pass  by  Perdita's 
physic  garden ;  for  it  seems  like  so  much  sleeping  dynamite. 
Were  not  Perdita  a  tender-hearted  Medea,  there  is  no  esti- 
mating what  fantastic  mischief  she  might  not  work  with  all 
these  charged  roots  and  poisonous  leaves  and  flowers. 

Along  with  these  enchanted  herbs  grow  simpler  plants  for 
simpler  uses— plants  distillations  and  decoctions  of  which  are 
efficacious  for  lotions  and  cordials  and  balms :  the  little  celan- 
dine, which,  even  the  swallows  know,  is  good  for  dim  eyes 
(hence  another  name  for  it,  the  swallow -wort);  agrimony  is 
there,  too,  in  case  of  sore  throats  in  the  household;  and  the 
velvet-spired  mullein,  invaluable  for  coughs,  as  valerian  for 
the  nerves.  Borage,  the  herb  of  courage,  is,  of  course,  not 
forgotten.  Ego  Borrago  gaudia  semper  ago — "  I  borage  bring  all— 
waies  courage  "—ran  the  old  saying,  and,  according  to  old 
Robert  Burton,  who  ought  to  know,  it  is  so  powerful  against 
melancholy  that  "all  thy  dearest  friends  may  die  and  thou 
couldst  not  grieve."  Dittany  and  camomile  and  bugloss  are 
there  also,  and  these  may  be  held  indispensable,  for  there  is 
nothing  like  them  to  cure  snake-bites — unless,  indeed,  it  be 
the  smoke  of  juniper,  which  always  "drives  away  venomous 
beasts,  and  doth  astonish  them."  Beware,  however,  how  you 
admit  money-wort  or  fennel  into  your  garden,  for  these  plants 
attract  serpents. 

Ill 

Having  got  her  physic  garden  well  established,  Perdita's 
next  step  was  to  set  up  her  own  still-room  and  stock  her 
simple  cupboard.     It  is  no  use   making-believe  unless   you 

98 


PERDITA'S   SIMPLE   CUPBOARD 


make-believe  seriously,  and  Perdita  will  never  admit  but  that 
she  takes  her  simpling  quite  seriously — "  that  excellent  art  of 
simpling  which  " — she  sometimes  quotes  at  me  from  Gerarde 
— "  hath  been  a  studie  for  the  wisest,  an  exercise  for  the 
noblest,  a  pastime  for  the  best,  ...  a  science  nobly  supported 
by  wise  and  kingly  favourites ;  the  subject  thereof  so  neces- 
sarie  and  delectable,  that  nothing  can  be  confected  either  deli- 
cate for  the  taste,  daintie  for  smell,  pleasant  for  sight,  whole- 
some for  bodie,  conservative  or  restorative  for  health,  but  it 
borroweth  the  relish  of  an  herbe,  the  flavour  of  a  flower,  the 
colour  of  a  leafe,  the  juice  of  a  plant,  or  the  decoction  of  a 
roote;  .  .  .  who  would  therefore  look  dangerously  up  at 
Planets  that  might  safely  look  down  at  Plants?" 

As  I  have  said  before,  one  of  the  charms  of  an  old  house 
is  the  number  of  out-of-the-way  rooms  and  cupboards  which 

99 


AN    OLD   COUNTRY    HOUSE 

you  don't  know  what  to  do  with.  In  one  of  these  rooms — 
prettily  looking  out  across  the  sun-dial  and  the  cut  yews — 
Perdita  set  up  her  herbal  laboratory,  and  there  you  may  often 
find  her  nowadays,  like  some  fair  young  alchemist,  surrounded 
with  alembics  and  mortars  and  gallipots  and  other  mysterious- 
looking  vessels,  and  poring  with  knit  brows  over  some  old  folio, 
endeavoring  to  wrest  from  it  the  secret  of  some  sententiously 
elaborate  recipe  or  mysteriously  worded  process.  From  the 
ceiling  hang  neat  brown-paper  parcels  containing  dried  or  dry- 
ing plants,  and  shelves  crowded  with  bottles  and  jars  carefully 
labelled  run  round  the  room.  These  are  filled  with  precious 
roots  and  seeds  and  flower- heads  and  wonder-working 
withered  leaves.  On  such  occasions  Perdita's  business  may 
not  always  be  so  mysterious  as  it  seems.  She  is  not  neces- 
sarily brewing  a  subtle  and  deadly  poison  or  compounding  a 
love-philter  or  distilling  the  elixir  of  life.  She  may  only  be 
making  cowslip  wine  or  spirits  of  violets  or  conserve  of 
roses.  As  Perdita  is  reckoned  very  successful  with  her  con- 
serve of  roses,  you  may  care  to  know  how  she  makes  it. 
Here  is  her  recipe:  "Take  Roses  at  your  pleasure,  put  them 
to  boyle  in  faire  water,  having  a  regard  to  the  quantitie ;  for 
if  you  have  many  Roses,  you  may  take  the  more  waters ;  if 
fewer,  the  lesse  water  will  serve ;  the  which  you  shall  boyle 
at  the  least  three  or  fower  howers  even  as  you  would  boyle  a 
peace  of  meate,  untill  in  the  eating  they  be  very  tender,  at 
which  time  the  Roses  will  lose  their  colour  that  you  would 
think  your  labour  lost,  and  the  thing  marred.  But  proceede, 
for  though  the  Roses  have  lost  their  colour,  the  water  hath 
gotten  the  tincture  thereof;  then  shall  you  adde  unto  one 
pounde  Roses  fower  pounds  of  fine  sugar  in  pure  powder, 
and  so  according  to  the  rest  of  the  Roses.     Thus  shall  you 

ioo 


PERDITA'S   SIMPLE   CUPBOARD 

let  them  boyle  gently  after  the  sugar  is  put  thereto,  con- 
tinually stirring  it  with  a  wooden  Spatula  untill  it   be  cold, 
whereof  one  pound  weight  is  worth  six  pound  of  the  crude 
or  rawe  conserve,  as  well  for  the  virtues  and  goodness   in 
taste,  as  also  for  the  beautiful  colour." 

As  an  example  of  at  once  the  lucidity  and  the  mysterious- 
ness  of  some  of  these  old  instructions,  here  is  the  process 
recommended  by  an  eighteenth-century  herbalist  for  the  dis- 
tillation of  "Spirits:  Take  the  Herbs,  Flowers,  etc.,  beat  them 
in  a  Mortar  and  Pickle  them  with  Salt,  in  an  Earthen  Vessel, 
by  mixing  the  Salt  therewith ;  put  all  well  into  a  well-glazed 
Earthen  Jar,  pressing  them  well  down;  Stop  the  Vessel  very 
close,  and  put  it  into  a  cellar  for  3  or  4  months,  till  they 
have  a  sharp  or  Wine -like  Smell,  then  distil  in  a  Vesica, 
in  Balneo,  or  Sand,  or  Ashes  to  driness.  Cohobate  the  Spirit 
and  distil  again,  after  which  rectify  it  in  a  Glass  Matrass,  in 
a  gentle  Balneo,  or  Sand-heat." 

"Vesica"  —  "Balneo"  —  "Cohobate";  here  are  words  of 
mystery  which  the  reader  will  not  need  to  have  explained, 
but  which,  of  course,  Perdita  understands. 

When  you  come  to  think  of  it,  and  if  you  care  to  picture 
Perdita  in  her  still-room,  I  think  you  will  agree  with  me  that 
few  games  you  could  play  at  could  be  more  stimulating  to 
the  imagination  or  more  rich  in  comprehensive  suggestive- 
ness.  Perhaps  no  single  study  concentrates  so  much  of  the 
romance  of  human  thought  as  the  study  of  simples.  All  the 
lore  and  all  the  legend  of  the  ages,  so  much  of  all  the  dark 
and  shining  history  of  time,  the  strange  old  beginnings  of 
wisdom,  the  eternal  poetry  in  the  child-like  heart  of  man — all 
this  is  implicit  in  the  very  sap  and  shape  and  fragrance  of 
every  storied  herb  and  flower  you  gather.    Terrible  mysteries 

101 


AN    OLD    COUNTRY   HOUSE 

of  fearful  old  creeds,  beautiful  stories  of  dead  gods  and  god- 
desses, adventurous  guesses  at  the  starry  sky,  picturesque 
experiments  in  the  unknown  properties  of  things,  dark  tales 
of  human  passions ;  yes,  the  whole  wandering  history  of  the 
soul  of  man  is  to  be  found  written  somewhere  in  leaves  and 
flowers.  Take  for  a  moment  a  few  plants  with  the  simplest, 
most  familiar  associations.  Mistletoe,  we  say,  or  asphodel ; 
think  of  the  immediate  vividness  with  which  those  two  words 
call  up  a  mysterious  religion  and  a  whole  mythology.  Or, 
again,  hyssop  and  hemlock.  Is  it  possible  to  use  those  words 
without  thinking  in  the  same  instant  of  the  two  great  death- 
scenes  in  human  history — death-scenes  which  together  sym- 
bolize from  different  points  of  view  the  whole  extended  tragedy 
of  human  thought?  Is  not  the  long  agony  of  a  noble  race 
stamped  forever  on  the  little  shamrock  as  the  sorrow  of  a 
god  is  printed  each  spring  upon  the  "  lettered  hyacinth  "  ?  and 
who  can  pluck  the  narcissus  without  seeing  a  beautiful  Greek 
boy  loving  his  own  face  in  a  spring?  How  much  of  human 
dream  and  human  history  is  bound  up  with  these  seven  plants 
alone,  chosen  at  random  as  being  most  obvious  to  the  memory! 
The  names  of  many  other  plants  hardly  less  familiar,  and 
generally  significant  in  their  associations,  could  readily  be  re- 
called. And  if  the  plants  thus  growing  on  the  broad  highways 
of  human  history  are  so  fragrantly  learned,  it  is  easy  to  under- 
stand into  what  fascinating  byways  of  forgotten  thought  and 
forgotten  story  plants  less  familiar  can  lead  us.  Yes!  I  am 
inclined  to  think  that  Perdita  cannot  be  gainsaid  in  her  state- 
ment that  there  is  no  single  study  which  can  compete  with 
the  study  of  simples  as  an  attractive  general  introduction  to 
all  other  studies  whatsoever.  Here,  indeed,  is  the  primrose 
path  of  knowledge. 

102 


PERDITA'S   SIMPLE   CUPBOARD 


103 


AN   OLD   COUNTRY    HOUSE 

Besides,  consider  the  delight  of  the  mere  method  of  the 
study.  Other  studies  crook  your  back,  contract  your  chest, 
and  impair  your  complexion,  but  to  go  a-simpling  means  day 
after  day  of  fresh  air,  and  hardy  trudging  of  the  country-side. 
You  do  your  work  knee-deep  in  daisies,  and  birds  and  butter- 
flies and  sweet  smells  are  your  fellow-students  all  day  long 
in  the  blue-domed  library  of  the  green  earth.  Should  you 
miss  the  plant  you  are  after,  you  have  at  least  found  a  fine 
exhilaration  of  the  blood,  you  come  home  with  cheeks  like 
wild  roses  and  all  the  sweetness  of  the  racing  breeze  in  your 
lungs.    Therefore,  say  I,  be  advised  to  go  a-simpling. 


IV 


As  a  passion  for  simpling  probably  begins  in  that  library 
corner  of  warm  old  leather — a  fancy  for  collecting  old  herbals 
— so  it  necessarily  consummates  itself,  through  the  inter- 
mediate ardors  of  the  physic  garden  and  the  still-room,  in 
the  simple  cupboard,  where  are  hoarded  all  the  gains  of 
your  herb-craft,  the  various  thrilling  secrets  you  have  wrested 
from  nature  —  the  potent  distillations,  the  sovereign  balms, 
the  subtle  essences,  the  stealing  opiates,  the  magic  roots,  the 
deadly  tinctures,  the  dreaming  gums.  Perdita's  simple  cup- 
board is  a  little,  dimly  lighted  closet  most  effective  in  its  air 
of  mystery.  The  light  falls  into  it  stealthily  through  some 
small  squares  of  green  bottle-glass  set  in  the  top  of  the  door. 
At  first  you  can  barely  distinguish  the  dim  array  of  phials 
and  jars  upon  the  shelves,  and  a  mystic  aromatic  odor  per- 
vades the  room ;  but  as  you  grow  used  to  the  light  you  find 
yourself  able  to  read  the  prettily  written  labels,  and  to  realize 

104 


PERDITA'S   SIMPLE   CUPBOARD 

with  a  smile  the  decorative  thrift  which  has  inspired  Perdita 
to  dignify,  with  such  romantic  uses,  many  a  household  flask 
and  pipkin  previously  associated  in  your  mind  less  with  the 
mysteries  of  astrologic  botany  than  with  the  more  accustomed 
mysteries  of  delicate  gastronomy.  You  think  first  rather  of  a 
delicatessen  shop,  with  its  quaint  pots  and  picturesque  glass 
jars  come  together  from  so  many  classic  corners  of  the 
gastronomic  world.  Here  surely  is  your  old  friend  pate  de 
foie  gras  in  its  prescribed  earthenware  mug,  with  the  rimmed 
lid.  But  you  look  at  the  label  and  read:  "An  excellent  paste 
of  rue,  walnuts,  figs,  and  juniper  berries,  eaten  by  the  great 
Mithridates  as  a  defensive  against  poison." 

Again  your  eye  falls  on  one  of  the  slim,  urn-shouldered 
wine-bottles  of  Capri;  looking  at  the  label  you  read:  "Dis- 
tilled water  of  broom-flowers  as  used  by  Henry  VIII.  against 
surfeits."  A  tiny  pot,  looking  for  all  the  world  as  if  it  had 
once  held  Liebig's  extract  of  beef,  contains,  you  read:  " Ash- 
sap— against  serpents."  Here  is  a  fluted  glass  jar  indissolubly 
associated  in  your  mind  with  olive-orchards  and  violets.  You 
look  at  the  label  and  read:  "-Juice  of  arum— good  for  the 
plague."  Yonder  is  a  nabob-bellied  jar  that  must  contain 
ginger.  No—"  Peony  roots — against  convulsions."  And  here  is 
an  old  scent-bottle  labelled,  "Sap  of  dog-wood  from  East 
Prussia — to  fulfil  your  every  wish." 

So  with  delightful  incongruity  the  larder  and  the  laboratory 
meet  on  every  label.  Perhaps  you  might  care  to  read  a  few 
more  of  the  labels: 

"Water  of  Thyme— for  passion  of  ye  hearte." 

"Linden  Bloom." 

"  Elder  juice  to  anoint  the  eyes  that  they  may  see  W Itches." 

"Princess  Elizabeth  her  Cordial  against  Melancholy.  Nov.  1540." 

105 


AN   OLD    COUNTRY   HOUSE 

"  De  Luce  Leaves— for  staunching  Blood." 

"  Spikenard— very  precious" 

"A  marvellous  Snail  IV at er for  weak  babes  and  old  people" 

"Marsh  mallow  roots." 

"Euphrasy — to  purge  the  sight" 

"Then  purged  with  euphrasy  and  rue 
His  visual  orbs." — Milton. 

"The  Green  Ointment— for  Swellings" 
"  Hempseed — to  show  you  your  true  lover  at  midnight  on  Mid- 
summer Eve" 

"  Hempseed  I  sow  thee,  hempseed  I  sow  thee, 
And  he  that  must  be  my  true  love 
Come  after  me  and  mow  me." 

"  Hypericum — culled  on  a  Friday  in  the  hour  of  Jupiter — 
wherewith  to  scare  away  fiends." 

"  Honey  from  Mount  Hybla." 

' '  Against  Vapours. ' ' 

"  Bawme  for  ye  Warriors  Wounds." 

"  To  induce  Sleep." 

"Dent  de  Lion  roots." 

"Aqua  Mirabilis  (Sir  Kenelm  Digby's  way,  and  approved  by 
Him)." 

"  Dittany —Proven  to  draw  out  arrows  from  wild  beasts  and 
mankind." 

"  Camomile  flowers." 

"A  Singular  Mint 

for  to  Make  Merrie 
the 

106 


PERDITA'S   SIMPLE   CUPBOARD 

"A  Sovereign  Remedy  against  ye  Spleen." 
" Fernseed — whereby  to  pass  Invisible" 
"Wine  of  Marigolds  to  Inspire  Love." 
"  Water-Lily  Roots  to  cool  the  Affections." 
"Webs  of  Spring  Gossamar  for  Wounds." 
"  Water  from  St.  Winifred's  Well  drawn  therefrom  between 
Sunset  and  Sunrise." 

11  Sprigs  of  Yew  'slivered  in  the  moons  eclipse'" 
"  May -Dew— for  the  cheeks  of  young  Maids." 

So  Perdita  touches  old  science  with  the  wand  of  her  fancy, 
and  makes-believe  like  one  of  her  own  babies.  As  I  have 
said  before,  we  must  all  play  at  something.  Surely  there  is 
no  prettier  and  more  appropriate  game  for  an  old  house  than 
to  play  at  simpling.  To-night,  I  may  add,  being  St.  John's 
Eve,  Perdita  and  I  are  off  to  gather  fern-seed,  our  stock  having 
run  rather  low. 


Of  A  Violet 
In  An  Old  Book 


Of  A  Violet 
In  An  Old  Book 


i 

IT  had  been  autumn  when  Perdita  and  I  had  taken  posses- 
sion, of  our  old  house,  and  the  glory  of  the  garden  was  all 
but  gone.  The  flowers  that  remained  wore  a  funereal  aspect, 
as  though  they  were  being  grown  for  the  bier  of  the  dying 
summer — chill  chrysanthemums  and  rigid,  bitter- breathed 
dahlias,  to  which  no  hollow  pomp  of  color  could  give  a 
convincing  air  of  being  real  flowers— soft,  warm  flowers — 
such  as  June  lets  fall  from  her  deep  bosom. 

The  trees  were  beginning  to  look  like  trees  in  a  stage 
setting,  curiously  spectral  and  artificial,  and  drifts  of  dead 
leaves  rustled  beneath  our  feet  with  a  thin,  sharp  sound, 
curiously  mournful,  and  even  ominous.  Everything  was  fad- 
ing and  sighing  and  passing  away.  Even  our  young  hopes 
were  hardly  proof  against  the  melancholy  of  the  dying  year, 
and  we  drew  closer  together,  with  a  shiver  of  fear. 

Then,  too,  as  I  have  said,  this  was  the  first  time  we  had 
possessed  a  garden,  and  we  were  naturally  impatient  with 
these  chill,  empty  beds  and  shivering  trees.  We  were  eager 
for  buds  and  blossoms,  and  busy  wings,  and  all  the  green 
armies  of  the  spring. 

To  enter  into  your  garden  in  September  is  like  buying 

ii  i 


AN   OLD   COUNTRY   HOUSE 

seats  for  an  empty  theatre,  or  as  the  curtain  is  going  down 
on  the  last  act  of  the  playc  You  come  in  as  the  lights  are 
being  put  out,  and  soon  there  will  be  nothing  but  the  haunted, 
empty  stage.  And  you  have  to  wait  at  least  four  months  for 
the  return  of  the  players.  Not  till  late  in  February  will  there 
be  any  sign  of  life  in  the  theatre.  By  then,  green  shoots  here 
and  there  will  tell  you  that  the  actors,  in  their  silks  and 
satins,  are  on  the  way,  and  a  precocious  primrose  may  make 
a  soft  little  shining  in  an  out-of-the-way  corner,  and  perhaps 
even  a  whole  line  of  crocuses  will  suddenly  flash  awake,  like 
a  row  of  footlights.  You  hear  the  orchestra  tuning  up  in  the 
shrubberies  and  about  the  eaves,  but,  practically,  you  have  to 
wait  until  the  end  of  March  for  any  active  stir  in  the  theatre 
— and,  if  you  have  taken  your  seats  in  September,  that  is  a 
long  time  to  wait.  However,  a  rarely  picturesque  winter 
filled  in  the  interval  with  so  many  surprises  of  beauty  that 
we  didn't  find  the  waiting  so  long  as  we  expected;  and  at 
last,  towards  the  middle  of  March,  there  seemed  to  pass  a 
sudden  quiver  of  joy  through  the  earth.  You  could  distinctly 
feel  it.  It  was  almost  as  though  the  meadows  heaved  a  sigh 
of  awakening;  there  was  a  curious  kindness  in  the  air;  though 
you  walked  alone,  you  could  almost  have  sworn  some  one 
kissed  your  cheek;  and  overhead  were  warm,  rolling  clouds, 
laden  with  more  violets  and  primroses  than  they  could  carry. 
Just  at  this  moment,  before  anything  had  really  hap- 
pened in  the  garden,  Perdita  and  I  were  compelled  to  pay  a 
family  visit  of  a  fortnight — just,  I  say,  at  the  very  moment 
when  the  music  was  about  to  strike  up.  To  lose  a  fortnight 
of  the  garden  then  was  vexatious.  It  was  like  leaving  a 
child  you  love  for  a  whole  year  between  the  dear  ages  of 
two  and  three.    We  were  to  miss  all  the  first  baby-talk  of 

I  12 


OF  A   VIOLET   IN   AN   OLD   BOOK 

the  spring.  However,  there  was  no  help  for  it.  We  had 
to  go.  At  last  we  returned,  all  impatient  to  see  what  the 
garden  had  been  doing  in  our  absence,  but,  alas!  it  was  dark 
before  we  reached  home.  We  must  still  wait  a  whole 
night,  till  the  curtain  of  darkness  had  gone  up. 

"But  why?"  said  Perdita.  "Let  us  take  a  lamp  and  see 
as  much  as  we  can." 

We  laughed,  for  the  suggestion  was  something  like  see- 
ing the  Alps  by  candle-light.  However,  the  fantastic  motion 
was  carried,  and  out  into  the  garden  we  went,  I  carrying  a 
big  lamp  from  my  study-table,  and  Perdita  following  close 
at  my  side.  It  was  a  dark,  brooding  night,  not  a  star  to  be 
seen.  But  there  was  a  curious  friendliness  about  the  dark- 
ness. It  was  not  the  darkness  that  makes  you  feel  afraid. 
You  would  have  trusted  yourself  with  it  anywhere.  And, 
dark  as  it  was,  though  as  yet  we  could  see  nothing,  we  had 
hardly  crossed  the  threshold  before  we  were  aware  of  a 
great  difference  in  the  garden.  An  indefinable  sense  of  oc- 
cupation pervaded  it.  Just  as  you  may  go  in  the  dark  into 
a  room  you  had  thought  empty,  and  immediately  be  quite 
sure  that  some  one  is  there.  We  had  a  strange  feeling  of 
there  being  less  room  in  the  garden,  of  an  unaccustomed 
cosiness,  so  to  say.  In  our  absence,  furniture  had  been 
brought  in,  carpets  laid  down,  and  tapestries  stretched  along 
the  walls. 

"Hush!"  said  Perdita,  laying  her  hand  on  my  arm. 
"They  have  come  back.    The  garden  is  full  of  them.     Listen." 

And  true  it  was  that  we  seemed  to  be  surrounded  with 
little  sleeping  presences   on   every  side. 

"Why,  look!"  said  Perdita.     "Oh,  look  at  this  rose-tree!" 

And   sure    enough,    the   great   old    rose-tree   that   climbs 

8  113 


AN   OLD   COUNTRY    HOUSE 

the    outside    of    my    study   wall — the    inside    is    tapestried 
with  old   poets — was  packed  with  close-set  shoots. 

"Lower  the  lamp  a  moment,  dear,"  said  Perdita.  "I 
want  to  see  if  the  violets  are  out  yet.  Why,  yes.  Oh, 
look  at  theml    And  now  let  us  look  at  the  mulberry-tree." 

The  mulberry-tree  was  bursting  with  buds  sitting  along 
his  old  arms  like  tiny,  roosting  birds,  and  the  cherry-tree  was 
crowded  with  blossoms,  like  butterflies  asleep.  We  almost 
expected  them  to  fly  away  with  the  light  of  the  lamp. 

So  all  round  the  garden  we  carried  our  lamp,  and  every- 
where we  found  the  spring  at  work  with  surreptitious  shoot 
or  sweetening  bud. 

As  we  returned  in-doors  with  our  hearts  wonderfully 
happy,  Perdita  bent  down  and  gathered  two  of  the  violets. 

"Keep  one  of  these,"  she  said,  "and  I  will  keep  the  other. 
Think,  they  are  the  very  first  violets  from  our  very  first 
garden." 

So,  going  into  my  study,  I  placed  my  violet  between  the 
leaves  of  my  rare  first  edition  of  Sir  John  Suckling. 


II 


When  the  spring  was  at  length  so  grown-up  a  maiden  as 
to  necessitate  one's  addressing  her  as  summer,  when  the 
clouds  had  long  since  unloaded  their  cargoes  of  crocus  and 
daffodil,  and  other  cloud  galleons  had  come  up  laden  with 
roses  and  honeysuckles  and  a  thousand  sweets  of  garden 
and  meadow,  Perdita  and  I  made  an  exciting  discovery. 

We  were  sitting  in  the  garden  over  our  tea,  at  the  lazy 
end  of  the  afternoon,  our  eyes  resting  lovingly  on  the  old 

114 


OF  A  VIOLET   IN   AN   OLD   BOOK 

house  with  its  piled-up  gables  and  russet-roofed  outbuildings. 
Nothing  disturbed  the  warm  summer  silence  but  the  sleepy 
croon  of  doves  and  the  occasional  soft  lapping  of  white  wings 
round  the  old  granary. 

"I  wonder  why  we  don't  do  something  with  that  old 
garden-house?"  said  Perdita,  suddenly.  "I  am  sure  it  could 
be  made  charming." 

Her  eyes  had  fallen  upon  a  little  tumble-down  place  of 
two  stories,  away  from  the  house  itself,  and  tucked  into  an 
angle  of  the  garden  wall  like  a  wasp's  nest.  An  elder-tree 
flourished  beside  it,  and  its  shingle  roof  was  overrun  with 
a  vast  old  vine.  The  eaves  extended  down  in  front  and 
were  supported  by  the  trunks  of  un'barked  trees  for  pil- 
lars, so  as  to  make  a  sort  of  veranda,  and  you  entered 
by  a  pretty,  lancet-shaped  French  window,  set  with  lozenges 
of  old  glass.    It  was  picturesque  at  its  best. 

So  far,  we  had  paid  as  little  attention  to  it  as  to  our 
haunted  stables,  or  our  wine  cellars,  for  which  we  possessed 
no  wine,  and  on  our  going  through  the  place  on  our  first 
taking  it,  it  had  seemed  of  no  importance  to  us  that  the  key 
of  the  top  room  was  lost.  There  seemed  no  immediate  hurry 
for  finding  it,  for  the  place  was  all  damp  and  ruinous,  the 
very  boards  of  the  floor  were  rotting  away,  and  here  and 
there  were  broken  in  holes.  We  had  tacitly  decided  that 
it  would  cost  more  money  than  it  was  worth  to  put  it  into 
any  sort  of  repair.  So  we  had  left  it  to  the  spiders  and 
the  creeping  mould. 

But  suddenly  this  afternoon,  as  I  say,  it  had  struck  Per- 
dita's  imagination,  and  nothing  would  satisfy  her  but  that  we 
should  take  another  look  at  it. 

"This  could  really  be  made  into  quite  a  pretty  room,"  said 


AN   OLD   COUNTRY    HOUSE 

Perdita,  as  we  stood  inside,  with  a  housewife's  eye  for  an 
interior.  I  could  see  by  her  preoccupied  glances  around  that 
she  was  already  choosing  the  paper  for  the  mouldering 
walls,  and  was  furnishing  it  in  her  imagination.  Mean- 
while, by  the  aid  of  a  lighted  match,  I  was  exploring  a 
mysterious  chamber  at  the  back  of  the  first  room.  Rough 
shelves  ran  around  it,  and  it  had  evidently  been  used  for 
storing  fruit.  But  the  interesting  feature  of  the  room,  which, 
indeed,  was  hardly  more  than  a  big  cupboard,  was  a  narrow 
staircase  which  led  to  the  room  above.  At  the  top  of  the 
staircase  a  door  barred  the  way,  the  door  of  the  lost  key. 
The  fascination  of  a  closed  door  is  eternal,  though  there  be 
nothing  behind,  and  the  whole  mystery  is  in  the  lock.  At 
this  door  my  imagination  was  fired  and  my  interest  also 
aroused.  I  determined  to  solve  the  mystery  without  the  key. 
But  the  door  was  a  stout  one,  and  the  lock  evidently  strong. 
Though  I  threw  my  whole  weight  upon  it,  it  showed  no 
signs  of  giving;  so  I  went  off  to  the  house  in  search  of 
a  hatchet  and  some  candles — Perdita,  in  her  turn,  mocking 
my  unexpected  enthusiasm. 

"  What  children  we  are,  to  be  so  excited  about  an  empty 
room!"  said  Perdita,  as  I  returned,  and,  lighting  one  of  the 
candles,  gave  it  to  her  to  hold. 

"How  do  you  know  that  it  is  empty?  We  may  find  it 
filled  with  bags  of  gold,  and  a  skeleton  sitting  at  a  table 
piled  with  rose-nobles  or  doubloons  from  the  Spanish  main." 

I  little  knew  how  near  to  the  truth  my  jest  was  to 
prove;  for,  when  two  or  three  determined  blows  with  the 
hatchet  had  broken  the  lock  and  we  pushed  open  the  door, 
we  did  not,  indeed,  come  upon  a  skeleton  at  a  table,  nor 
hoards   of  ancient  gold,  but  we  did  come  upon   a  surprise 

116 


OF   A  VIOLET   IN   AN   OLD   BOOK 

which  we  had  not  bargained  for,  and  which  interested  us 
no  less. 

At  first  we  could  see  little,  for  the  three  skylights  which 
were  the  only  windows  were  so  smothered  with  the  vine 
that  not  a  ray  of  sunlight  could  steal  in,  and  the  candle- 
light was  slow  in  finding  its  way  about  in  the  darkness. 
But  almost  immediately  we  had  realized  that  the  room  was 
filled  with  books! 

Yes!  filled  with  books!  Perdita  and  I  literally  shouted 
with   surprise  and  joy. 

"We  must  have  a  lamp!"  Perdita  exclaimed.  "We  can  see 
nothing  with  these  candles."  So  off  she  ran,  and  presently 
returned  with  the  lamp  which  we  had  carried  round  the 
garden  that  spring  night.  But  on  what  a  different  picture 
now  it  poured  its  rays!  Everywhere  on  the  floor  were 
books  hurled  in  indescribable  confusion,  books  of  all  shapes 
and  sizes,  folios,  quartos,  duodecimos,  and  over  all  ran  a 
thick  network  of  cobwebs,  black  and  heavy  with  the  dust 
of  years.  At  first  sight  one  would  have  said  that  an  army 
of  bats  were  feeding  on  the  old  leather.  Never  were  books 
in  such  a  sad  plight  of  dirt  and  decay.  Many  of  them,  too, 
had  been  half  eaten  away  by  learned  rats,  and  many  were 
falling  to  pieces  with  the  damp,  and  the  drill  of  the  book- 
worm had  more  or  less  travelled  through  them  all.  Great 
garden  spiders  had  made  snug  quarters  for  themselves  in 
the  old  bindings,  beetles  and  wood-lice  fled  in  dismay  as 
we  dislodged  them  from  immemorial  strongholds,  and  in  a 
fine  old  folio  Lucretius,  which  had  chanced  to  lie  near  a 
chink  in  the  decaying  wall,  we  came  upon  a  deserted  nest. 

When  we  had  recovered  from  our  first  surprise  at  our 
treasure-trove,  we  naturally  fell  to  wondering  how  the  books 

"7 


AN    OLD    COUNTRY   HOUSE 

had  come  there,  to  whom  they  had  belonged,  and  how  they 
had  come  to  be  so  entirely  forgotten  ?  It  seemed  evident 
that  they  had  lain  there  for  many  years,  and  the  scholarly 
habits  of  the  old  bachelor  who  had  lived  in  the  house  before 
us,  and  of  whom  I  have  already  spoken,  made  it  certain  that 
he  must  have  been  unaware  of  their  existence  too;  for  surely 
he  could  never  have  allowed  so  much  noble  learning  and 
elegant  belles-lettres  to  rot  in  such  unmannerly  oblivion. 
We  tried  one  theory  and  another  as  we  fought  our  way 
through  the  cobwebs  and  the  wood-lice,  but  none  seemed 
satisfactory.  So  far  we  had  but  one  clew.  In  each  book 
was  pasted  an  armorial  book-plate  of  old  design  with  the 
legend,  "Ex  libris  Gulielmus  Chalcroft,"  and  in  one  of  the 
volumes  we  had  come  across  the  inscription,  "William  Chal- 
croft; Balliol  College,  Oxford,  17^1."  The  books  had  then 
evidently  been  the  library  of  one  William  Chalcroft,  a  gentle- 
man and  man  of  taste,  who  had  been  a  student  at  Oxford  in 
17^1.  Chalcroft!  The  name  struck  both  of  us  with  an  in- 
definable familiarity.  It  seemed  to  us  as  if  we  had  heard  it 
recently  or  seen  it  written  somewhere,  but  it  was  in  vain 
we  tried  to  fix  it. 

For  the  moment  we  gave  up  the  puzzle,  trusting  that  a 
more  careful  examination  of  the  books  would  throw  more 
light  upon  it.  Meanwhile  it  was  evident  to  us,  from  our  first 
cursory  dip  into  his  long-forgotten  library,  that  William  Chal- 
croft had  been  a  man  of  uncommonly  fine  taste  in  literature, 
with  a  strong  leaning  to  its  gentler  branches.  He  had  evi- 
dently been  a  great  reader  of  poetry,  and  of  poetry,  too,  not 
much  in  fashion  in  his  day.  A  cruelly  dilapidated  black- 
letter  Chaucer,  which  Perdita  discovered  with  a  cry  of  de- 
light, bore  witness  to  a  taste  for  a  fresher,  more  natural  style 

118 


OF  A   VIOLET   IN   AN   OLD   BOOK 

of  poetry  than  was  being  written  in  1751.  There  was  a 
Sidney's  "Arcadia,"  too,  of  which  I  shall  have  more  to  say 
later  on,  and  several  old  Elizabethan  song-books  and  "gar- 
lands." That  the  great  Greek  and  Roman  poets  were  also 
his  familiars  was  witnessed  by  many  of  those  stately,  sumpt- 
uously printed  editions  with  which  the  seventeenth  and 
eighteenth  centuries  knew  how  to  honor  a  classic.  I  will 
confess  that  any  distinction  my  little  library  possesses  in  this 
respect  is  due  chiefly  to  Gulielmus  Chalcroft. 

As  this  last  remark  may  have  a  larcenous  sound  to  the 
tender-conscienced  reader,  I  may  as  well,  here  and  now,  deal 
with  the  moral  dilemma  which  Perdita  and  I  realized  that  we 
had  to  face,  but  which  we  soon  disposed  of  with  robust 
criminality. 

"But  won't  these  books  come  under  the  head  of  'treasure- 
trove'?"  said  Perdita,  with  sudden  alarm— "won't  we  have  to 
give  them  up  to  the  lord  of  the  manor?" 

I  suppose  that  there  is  no  need  to  explain  to  the  reader 
that  by  the  English  law  the  lord  of  the  manor  is  not  only 
lord  of  the  fowl  of  the  air,  the  fishes  in  the  river,  and  all 
four-legged,  two-legged,  and  creeping  things  upon  the  sur- 
face of  his  particular  corner  of  the  earth,  but  also  of  all  old 
coins,  Saxon  fibulae,  Roman  urns,  and  such  like  under  the 
surface  of  the  earth.  If  a  field-laborer,  working  one  day 
in  a  lonely  field,  strikes  his  spade  into  a  jar  of  old  coins,  or 
disturbs  the  sleep  within  her  grassy  tumulus  of  some  Saxon 
princess  lying  there  with  all  her  gold  and  silver  ornaments 
about  her,  ready  for  her  hurried  toilet  at  the  last  trump, 
let  the  poor  field-laborer  beware  lest  he  deem  the  luck  is 
his  and  secrete  the  coins  or  the  gold  tiring-pins  in  the  thatch 
of  his  cottage.    The  luck  is  not  his  but  his  lord's,  and  his 

119 


AN   OLD   COUNTRY   HOUSE 

humble  duty  is  to  present  these  glittering  antiquities  to  the 
lord  of  the  manor,  who  may  give  him  a  guinea  for  the 
find,  or  send  him  to  the  kitchen  for  all  the  beer  he  has  a 
mind  to. 

Similarly,  might  it  not  be  our  duty  to  deliver  up  our  treas- 
ure-trove, the  library  of  Gulielmus  Chalcroft,  to  our  land- 
lord, sky-lord,  grass-lord,  fish-lord,  rabbit-lord? 

"Never!"  said  Perdita.  "If  he  cared  for  books  it  would 
be  different,  but  you  know  his  tastes.  And,  anyway,  if  he 
did,"  she  added,  with  determined  moral  obliquity,  "books  are 
different!" 

There,' indeed,  Perdita  expressed  one  of  the  deep-rooted, 
moral  peculiarities  of  the  bookman  in  all  times  and  among 
all  peoples.  In  regard  to  all  other  human  possessions  a 
bookman  is  as  honest  as  his  fellows,  but  with  books  his 
moral  judgment  is  not  to  be  trusted,  and  though  he  would 
die  rather  than  steal  a  pin,  he  is  apt,  as  the  history  of  bib- 
liomania abundantly  proves,  to  say  with  Perdita,  "  Books 
are  different!"  His  unconscious,  or  sometimes  even  out- 
spoken, argument  is  that  a  book  belongs  to  the  one  who  can 
best  appreciate  its  value — that  one,  of  course,  being  himself. 
Anarchists  say  much  the  same  thing  about  other  forms  of 
property,  and  an  application  of  the  principle  all  round  might 
somewhat  startle  the  gentle  bookman  out  of  his  peaceful 
dreams;  but  then,  as  Perdita  said,  "books  are  different"— 
and,  after  all,  to  keep  something  no  one  else  wanted, 
for  which  no  one  else  had  cared  for  over  a  hundred 
years,  there  could  hardly  be  any  great  harm  in  that,  could 

there  ? 

i 

Had  it  been  our  skeleton  with  the  rose-nobles  that  we 
had  found,  believe  us  that  we  would  have  behaved  with  be- 

120 


OF   A  VIOLET   IN   AN   OLD   BOOK 

fitting  honesty — but,  books  were  different ;  so  we  decided 
thereon,  in  consideration  of  our  having  rescued  it  from  dire 
distress  of  decay  and  unseemly  neglect,  and  of  our  giving 
it  a  home  and  honor  on  comfortable,  petted  shelves,  to  ap- 
propriate the  library  of  the  late  Gulielmus  Chalcroft  to  our- 
selves, until  such  time  as  his  uneasy  ghost  should  miss  his 
books  and   demand  them   back  again. 

Meanwhile,  however,  we  deemed  it  wise  to  take  pre- 
cautions. It  would  never  do  for  the  village  to  know  that 
we  had  found  some  five  hundred  old  books  in  a  garret,  for, 
while  having  no  use  for  books  themselves,  country  people 
have  quite  a  superstitiously  inordinate'  idea  of  the  value  of 
an  old  book  in  the  market,  and  are  apt  to  think  that  any 
book  whatsoever,  with  so  remote  a  date  as  1799  upon  its 
title-page,  is  worth  untold  gold ;  just  as  the  arduous  and  old 
oak  collectors  have  given  cottagers  the  most  inflated  notions 
of  the  value  of  the  most  commonplace  old  chest  or  chair. 
Therefore,  we  didn't  even  confide  in  our  friend  John,  the 
gardener,  and  we  decided  that  the  only  sage  way  was  to 
sort  and  renovate  them  where  they  were,  and  remove  them 
to  the  house  in  instalments  stealthily  by  night.  Meanwhile 
a  stout  padlock  and  a  staple  would  secure  the  door.  Having 
done  all  we  could  for  that  day,  we  lay  down  to  sleep— and 
dream  of  Caxtons,  First  Folios,  Aldines,  and  Elzevirs  till 
morning. 

Ill 

The  sun  and  I  were  up  together  on  the  morrow,  and  the 
unheard-of  hour  of  six  o'clock  found  me  already  at  work 
amid  the  must  and  dust  of  Chalcroft's  ghostly  library.  Mine 
was  no  light  task,  grimy  beyond  description — a  task  for  the 

121 


AN   OLD   COUNTRY   HOUSE 

very  oldest  clothes— and  often  it  was  almost  heart-breaking 
to  see  the  ravin  which  time  had  wrought  upon  all  this 
goodly  company  of  books— there  eager  scholars  and  sweet 
singers  huddled  together  in  such  an  ignominy  of  decay,  yet, 
as  the  old  poet  said,  still  smelling  sweet  and  blossoming  in 
the  dust.  The  destruction  of  the  Alexandrian  Library  had 
never  appealed  to  my  imaginative  pity  like  the  slow  rotting 
away  of  these  books,  some  of  which,  at  least,  I  had  just  come 
in  time  to  save  and  bring  back  to  the  light  of  the  sun.  For, 
after  all,  the  Alexandrian  Library  had  disappeared  in  a  holo- 
caust of  splendid  fire.  The  books  had  gone  to  their  death 
shining  martyrs  of  a  lost  learning.  They  had  been  spared 
the  slow -soiling  process  of  corruption.  But  here  were  the 
grewsomeness  of  the  very  sepulchre,  the  foul  cynicism 
of  the  grave.  Across  this  lordly  binding  was  the  recent 
track  of  the  snail,  and  within  the  pages  the  earwig  had 
made  his  filthy  nest.  Nature  had  sent  all  her  vermin  to 
desecrate  the  oblivion  of  all  this  beautiful  wisdom,  all  this 
.wise  beauty. 

"  Lilies  that  fester  smell  more  rank  than  weeds " ;  but 
whether  that  be  true  or  not,  certainly  the  decay  of  fair  things 
comes  to  us  with  a  greater  shock  of  paradox  than  the  decay 
of  things  less  fair.  We  can  hardly  believe  that  nature  can 
treat  them  so.  We  expect  for  them  more  delicate  processes 
of  dissolution.  Books,  of  all  things— with  these  fair  white 
pages  which  we  so  lovingly  turn,  are  so  careful  to  pre- 
serve from  soilure  of  careless  hands ;  exquisite  vessels, 
frail  and  rare,  in  which  are  mysteriously  hoarded  the  potent 
influences  and  sweet-smelling  thoughts  of  the  finest  spirits; 
these  carefully  guarded,  lovingly  tended  familiars  of  the 
perfumed  shelf,  taken  down  with   such  reverence,  put  back 

122 


OF  A  VIOLET   IN   AN   OLD   BOOK 

with  such  care,  fondled  in  the  lamp-light,  and  cherished  all 
the  day;  dainty  creatures  whom  one  dare  scarcely  trust 
into  the  hands  of  a  friend,  at  once  so  omnipotent  and  so 
fragile.  Oh,  bookman,  take  a  glance  over  your  own  pampered 
and  petted  shelves,  and  shudder  for  the  time  when,  maybe 
a  hundred  years  hence,  in  some  forgotten  garret,  the  rats 
will  tear  at  your  Riviere  bindings  and  the  wood-lice  swarm 
in  your  first  editions.  Perdita  delivered  me  from  these  wormy 
moralizings  by  coming  in  to  me  with  a  piece  of  news. 
She  had  traced  back  cur  shadowy  recollection  of  the  name 
of  Chalcroft  to  its  source. 

"Come  with  me,"  she  said,  "and  I  will  show  you." 

Then  she  took  me  to  the  corner  of  the  house,  where,  as 
I  have  previously  told  the  reader,  were  three  names  inscribed 
on  three  bricks  set  side  by  side. 

"There  it  is!"  she  said,  triumphantly,  pointing  up  at  the 
wall,  and  there,  sure  enough,  was  the  name  "Chalcroft," 
accompanied  by  "Coates"  and  "Diddlesfold" — all  dated 
"August,  1762." 

When  we  had  first  found  these  inscriptions  we  had  sur- 
mised, as  I  have  said,  that  Coates  and  Diddlesfold  and  Chal- 
croft had  been  three  friends  whose  fancy  it  was,  while  the 
new  house  was  building,  to  take  each  an  unset  brick,  write 
his  name  on  it,  and  then  get  the  bricklayer  to  set  the  three 
bricks  in  the  building  as  a  memorial  that  in  August,  1762, 
Coates,  Diddlesfold,  and  Chalcroft  were  good  friends,  and 
glad  to  be  alive.  We  had  also  at  the  time  of  the  discovery 
given  an  invitation  to  these  three  ghosts  to  give  us  the 
pleasure  of  their  acquaintance.  Chalcroft  had  at  last  re- 
sponded, and  I  went  back  to  my  work  on  his  library  with 
an  absurd  sense  of  being  nearer  to  the  old  bookman. 

123 


AN    OLD   COUNTRY   HOUSE 

When  we  met  at  lunch  Perdita  had  still  more  news  for 
me.  On  her  morning  walk  it  had  occurred  to  her  to  call 
on  the  old  sexton,  an  old  man  over  eighty,  and  yet  strong 
as  an  oak.  The  old  man  was  a  veritable  charnel-house  of 
village  history,  and  it  had  struck  Perdita  that  if  any  one  could 
tell  us  about  our  friend  Chalcroft  it  would  be  old  Mr.  Snow- 
ball. Nor  was  she  mistaken.  What  that  gnarled  and  gar- 
rulous chronicle  of  the  country-side  didn't  know  about  the 
Chalcrofts  was  not  worth  knowing,  and  Perdita  came  back 
home  a  mine  of  information. 

The  Chalcrofts  were,  it  appeared,  an  extinct  family  to- 
day, but  they  had  lived  very  vigorously  in  their  times  and 
were  still  very  much  alive  in  old  Mr.  Snowball's  memory. 
When  quite  a  lad,  the  old  man  had  helped  his  father,  who 
had  been  hereditary  sexton  before  him,  to  place  the  last  of 
them  in  the  family  vault,  which,  somewhat  moss-grown  and 
ruinous,  stood  in  a  dark,  umbrageous  corner  of  the  church- 
yard. 

They  had  been  lords  of  the  manor  for  many  generations, 
and  had  occupied  our  old  house  for  some  two  hundred 
years.  They  had  been  a  hard -living,  hard -riding  stock  for 
the  most  part — stalwart  drinkers  and  mighty  hunters  before 
the  Lord. 

"But,"  old  Mr.  Snowball  had  said,  impressively,  "there  is 
one  Chalcroft  you  won't  find  in  the  church-yard,  and  God 
Almighty  alone  may  know  where  he  is  to  this  day.  Not 
till  the  last  trumpet  sounds,  lady,  will  it  be  known  what 
became  of  William  Chalcroft— 'Young  Master  William,'  as 
my  grandfather  used  to  call  him.  They  say  he  was  a  great 
scholar,  and  they  do  say,  too,  that  he  and  his  elder  brother 
fought  one  moonlight  night  down  in  the  Monk's  Meadow  for 

124 


OF   A   VIOLET   IN   AN    OLD   BOOK 

the  sake  of  a  young  maid  they  both  loved.  No  one  rightly 
knew  even  then,  and  surely  no  one  will  ever  know  now. 
But  certain  it  is  that  one  morning  'Young  Master  William' 
was  missing  from  the  old  house,  and  he  never  came  back  to 
it  again." 

"Old  Mr.  Snowball  should  write  a  historical  novel,"  I 
laughed,  as  Perdita  told  me  this  picturesque  story.  "I'm 
afraid  he's  been  reading  The  Master  of  Ballantrae — and  shall 
I  tell  you  something,  Perdita?  I  don't  believe  one  little  bit 
in  your  old  Mr.  Snowball's  story.  But,  all  the  same,  we 
won't  say  that  you  made  it  all  up  out  of  your  own  head, 
shall  we?  Let  us  both  swear  to  believe  every  word  of  it, 
and  tell  it  to  each  other  till  it  comes  true." 

"You  can  ask  Mr.  Snowball  for  yourself,  if  you  like," 
retorted  Perdita,  with  a  sturdy  blush  of  detection  upon  her 
face. 

But  of  course  I  didn't;  and,  indeed,  I  have  since  come 
to  the  conclusion  that  Perdita  was  not  romancing  after  all. 
For  what  so  well  as  Mr.  Snowball's  story  will  fit  in  with  the 
corroborative  theory  which  I  conceive  will  account  for  the 
strange  neglect  of  William  Chalcroft's  library?  My  theory  is, 
that  after  William's  brother  had  killed  him  in  the  duel,  and 
in  some  mysterious  way  disposed  of  his  body,  he,  being 
a  coarse,  fox-hunting  man,  with  no  taste  for  learning,  and 
being,  moreover,  haunted  by  the  presence  in  the  house  of 
the  books  which  so  vividly  reminded  him  of  his  scholarly 
brother,  had  had  them  thrown  into  the  lumber-room  where 
we  had  found  them,  and  that  as  years  went  by  their  very 
existence  had  been  forgotten  in  a  household  which  read  so 
little  and  drank  so  much.  Such,  at  all  events,  had  come  to 
be  our  accepted  story  of  the  library  of  Gulielmus  Chalcroft, 

12* 


AN    OLD   COUNTRY    HOUSE 

and  as  there   is  no  competition,  I  see  no   reason  why  it  is 
not  as  true  as  any  other. 

IV 

I  said  that  Chalcroft's  library  numbered  some  five  hun- 
dred volumes.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  when  I  had  completed 
my  examination  of  it,  there  were  barely  three  hundred 
books  remaining  in  a  state  of  readable  preservation.  The 
rest  were  so  cruelly  maimed  and  nibbled  and  worm- 
eaten,  and  rotten  with  damp,  as  to  be  beyond  the  aid  of  any 
book-doctor,  however  skilful.  For  many  days  Perdita  turned 
her  still-room  into  a  sort  of  a  book-hospital,  and,  working  to- 
gether, we  did  all  we  could  to  restore  life  to  volume  after  vol- 
ume. Thanks  to  our  efforts,  many  a  crippled  folio  stood  firm 
on  its  feet  again,  marred  pages  were  practically  mended,  and 
though  some  of  the  books  we  cared  for  most  went  pain- 
fully limping,  without  title-pages,  and  others  betrayed  the 
evidences  of  amputation  and  the  various  severities  through 
which  they  had  passed,  you  may  be  sure  we  loved  them 
the  more  for  that,  and  were  more  than  rewarded  to  see 
their  look  of  pleasure  as,  installed  upon  comfortable,  lamp- 
lit  shelves,  they  found  themselves  once  more  alive  in  a 
world  of  living  books. 

What  to  do  with  the  poor,  battered  remnants  was  our 
next  problem — the  pathetic  torsos  of  noble  tomes,  the 
mouldering  mummies  of  books  that  fell  and  faded  at  a 
touch.  At  first  we  thought  to  burn  them,  but  Perdita  had  a 
prettier  idea. 

"  Let  us  bury  them  in  the  garden,"  she  said. 

And  so  one  night  by  lantern- light  I  dug  a  deep  hole  in 
the  garden,  and  together  Perdita  and  I  filled  it  with  tattered 

126 


OF  A   VIOLET   IN   AN   OLD   BOOK 

black-letter  and  old  print  of  Italy  and  France,  hopelessly 
eaten  of  the  moth  and  the  worm,  old  leather  and  calf  still 
glinting  here  and  there  with  gold,  and  all  manner  of  learned 
and  musical  disjecta  membra. 

"  I  wonder  what  sort  of  flowers  they  will  make,"  I  said,  as 
I  shovelled  in  the  last  spadeful  of  earth. 

"And  from  her  fair  and  unpolluted  flesh  may  violets 
spring!"  quoted  Perdita,  and  somehow  the  epitaph  seemed 
not  wholly  irrelevant,  for  there  in  that  grave  we  had  just 
dug  was  many  a  buried  song,  and  as  much  beauty  as  any 
drowned  maiden. 

A  day  or  two  after  this  Perdita  came  to  me  and  said, 
almost  with  tears  in  her  eyes: 

"Did  you  notice  this  in  the  Sidney's  'Arcadia'?" 

It  was  an  old  violet,  almost  colorless. 

"This  dropped  out  with  it,"  added  Perdita. 

It  was  a  sheet  of  paper,  yellow  with  age,  and  on  it,  in 
an  old-time,  scholarly  hand,  were  written  these  lines: 

"My  love  is  like  the  violet 

That  sweetens  all  the  waking  year. 
Alas!  as  short  a  time  she  stays, 

Too  soon  she  leaves  my  garden  bare. 

"For  what  though  rose  and  lily  bloom, 
In  vain  they  teach  me  to  forget, 
One  flower  the  garden  grows  for  me, 
One  flower— a  VIOLET!  " 

The  lines  were  signed  "Will:  Chalcroft." 

127 


AN   OLD    COUNTRY  HOUSE 

I  looked  suspiciously  at  Perdita,  but  she  bore  my  gaze 
unflinchingly. 

"It  looks  as  if  the  story  were  true,"  1  said. 

"I  thought  that  too,"  said  Perdita — and  presently  she 
added:  "Isn't  it  awful  to  think  that  there  were  violets  a 
hundred  and  fifty  years  ago  ?" 


WHEN  we  first  came  upon  our  old  Surrey  house,  the 
same  day  that  Perdita  and  I  went  house -hunting 
among  the  honeysuckles  and  the  wild  roses,  almost  her 
first  exclamation  was :  ;' 

"What  a  wonderful  old  place  for  a  real,  old-fashioned 
Christmas-card  Christmas !" 

It  was  the  very  top  of  midsummer,  and  the  air  was  all 
musk  and  the  droning  of  bees;  the  old  place  seemed  fast 
asleep  in  the  thick  afternoon  sunlight.  A  strange  moment  to 
think  of  snow,  and  gleaming  roads,  and  carol -singers,  and 
mince-pies !  But  Perdita  is  remarkably  sensitive  to  the 
dramatic  possibilities  of  her  surroundings;  and  even  on  that 
hot  summer  afternoon  it  only  needed  her  hint  to  realize  that 
Slumberfold  Old  Manor  would  certainly  look  its  best  some 
keen,  yet  kindly,  Christmas  night,  with  hoods  of  snow  drawn 
down  over  its  warm  gables,  ruddy  windows  pouring  welcome 
across  the  frozen  village  green,  and  muffled  feet  going  by 
under  the  braced-up,  bright-eyed  stars. 

One  afternoon  two  or  three  months  later,  when  dahlias  and 
chrysanthemums  were  beginning  to  take  the  place  of  the  more 
warm-blooded  flowers,  I  found  her  in  the  garden  with  several 
books  about  her.     I  took  one  up. 

"Pickwick"  I  said.    "Heavens!" 

Ml 


AN   OLD   COUNTRY   HOUSE 

I  took  another.  "Washington  Irving's  Sketch -Book!" 
And  again,  "  Brand's  Popular  Antiquities.  Why,  what  can  be 
the  matter?"  I  asked,  anxiously. 

"  Leave   me  alone,"    she   answered.    "  I   am  preparing  for 
Christmas." 

Later  Perdita  condescended  to  tell  me  something  of  her 
plans.  She  was  bent  on  a  real,  old-fashioned  Christmas,  and 
she  had  been  reading  up  authorities.  She  had  been  refresh- 
ing her  memory  of  Mr.  Wardle's  way  of  spending  Christmas, 
and  of  Christmas  at  Bracebridge  Hall,  and  she  was  hunting  in 
Brand  for  absurd  old  customs  that  might  possibly  be  revived. 

"If  you  wish  to  make  yourself  useful,"  she  said,  "you 
can  write  me  a  new  Christmas  carol.  You  had  better  set 
to  work  on  it  at  once.  There  is  no  time  to  be  lost.  You 
know  how  stupid  the  village  choir  is.  It  will  take  them  quite 
two  months  to  get  it  into  their  heads." 

I  meekly  assented,  and  the  result  of  my  poor  labors  may 
be  divulged  later.  By  the  time  that  Christmas  was  nearly  at 
hand  poor  Perdita  had  much  extended  her  experience  of 
village  stupidity.  Unless  the  fact  chances  to  have  been 
brought  home  to  you  by  similar  experiments  with  it,  you  can 
have  no  idea  what  hopeless  material  is  the  English  peasantry 
for  any  purpose  of  beauty  or  fancy.  Dealing  with  it,  you 
do  indeed  come  to  realize  that  man  is  made  of  clay — a  stub- 
born, deadening  clay,  in  which  the  fieriest  seeds  of  the  imag- 
ination are  immediately  quenched.  The  peasantry  of  many 
other  lands  dream  and  invent  and  sing.  They  make  fairies, 
and  weave  dances,  and  out  of  their  hearts  come  songs  like 
bees  out  of  a  hive.  But  the  English  peasant  can  do  none  of 
these  things.  He  is  a  clod,  who,  at  his  highest,  may  grad- 
uate as  a  carpenter,  or  shine,  maybe,  as  a  skilful  paper-hanger; 

132 


PERDITA'S   CHRISTMAS 

but  as  for  the  other  arts,  the  arts  of  innocent  joy,  they  have 
been  lost  to  him  for  more  than  two  hundred  and  fifty  years. 
You  can  still  be  taught  dancing  in  England,  but  since  Crom- 
well became  Lord  Protector  no  countryman  has  danced 
naturally,  as  before  his  sour  shadow  fell  across  English  village 
greens  our  merry  Englishmen  knew  well  enough  to  do.  The 
wild  flowers  of  popular  art  are  dead  in  England  this  many 
a  year ;  but  Perdita,  coming  as  she  does  from  a  land  where 
even  bricklayers  dream  dreams,  and  every  village  lad  has 
seen  his  ghost  and  met  his  fairy  and  heard  the  Karelei  sing- 
ing at  moonrise  among  the  rushes,  took  long  to  be  convinced. 

Poor  Perdita!  She  had  actually  dreamed  of  a  morris- 
dance!  She,  too,  would  have  a  mumming,  and  she  did  so 
want  a  hobby-horse  and  a  Lord  of  Misrule.  But  every  age 
has  its  own  pet  way  of  making  a  fool  of  itself,  and  it  was  in 
vain  that  she  tried  to  interest  the  members  of  her  village 
Bible-class  in  these  ancient  methods  of  foolishness.  There 
was  not  a  lad  in  the  whole  of  Slumberfold  that  could  dance 
a  step,  still  less  was  there  a  lad,  or  a  grown  man,  with  the 
smallest  dramatic  sense  or  a  spark  of  natural  comedy.  Her 
material  could  be  relied  on  to  sing  carols  not  so  badly,  and 
there  were  three  or  four  fair  performers  on  musical  instru- 
ments. But  the  resources  of  Slumberfold  could  no  further 
go.  We  were  not  Oberammergau,  and  Perdita  was  com- 
pelled to  give  up  some  of  her  most  cherished  fancies  in 
despair. 

Yet  if  Perdita  was  thus  robbed  of  some  of  the  picturesque 
pedantries  of  Christmas,  she  soon  found  enough  in  the  sur- 
viving realities  of  Christmas  to  keep  her  busily  occupied  for 
two  or  three  weeks  before  Christmas  came  in  earnest,  with 
a  determined  hard  frost  and  ruddy  skaters  and  bursting  pipes. 

»33 


AN    OLD    COUNTRY   HOUSE 

Two  or  three  months  ago,  as  we  strolled  over  a  neighboring 
common,  Perdita,  with  the  murderous  instinct  of  the  fore- 
seeing housewife,  had  bespoken  a  string  of  twenty  geese 
that  filed  by  us  into  a  neighboring  farm-yard.  There  were  at 
least  twenty  kind  country  folk  in  Slumberfold,  she  said,  to 
whom  she  would  owe  a  goose  at  Christmas,  and  with  every 
goose  went  a  plum-pudding,  some  mince-meat,  a  bottle  of 
wine,  and  a  sprig  of  mistletoe.  No  prime-minister,  at  some 
crisis  of  his  nation's  history,  and  holding  in  his  hands  the 
strings  of  international  destiny,  could  be  more  hummingly 
occupied  than  Perdita  while  these  momentous  hampers  were 
a-packing.  For  two  whole  days  she  never  kissed  me  once. 
And,  of  course,  she  had  so  much  else  to  think  of  besides. 
Pause  for  a  moment  and  think  what  was  on  her  mind!  She 
had  to  buy  presents  and  address  cards  for  something  like 
five  hundred  friends,  she  had  to  issue  invitations  for  an  old 
English  Christmas  dance,  she  had  to  train  the  village  choir 
in  their  capacity  as  waits,  she  had  to  decorate  the  house  with 
holly  and  mistletoe,  she  had  to  think  out  every  detail  of  the 
Christmas  tree,  not  to  speak  of  making  the  mince-meat  and 
plum-pudding  with  her  own  clever  hands.  For  it  is  one  of 
the  many  curious  convictions  of  your  true  housewife  that  no 
cook,  however  skilful,  can  be  trusted  with  the  manufacture 
of  these  mysterious,  sacred  dishes.  Perhaps  this  accounts  for 
the  proverbial  indigestibility  of  both. 

We  are  poor  people,  and  cannot  afford  the  true  manorial 
equipment  of  servants.  I  confess  that  most  of  our  servants 
are  "contrived  a  double  debt  to  pay";  and  it  is  to  their  ever- 
lasting credit  that  they  are  kind-hearted  enough  to  under- 
stand the  situation  and  help  us  out  with  great  good-nature. 
Perhaps  none  of  us  lose  by  it  in  the  long  run.    Certainly 

i?4 


PERDITA'S   CHRISTMAS 

Perdita  and  I  gain,  if  only  by  the  sense  of  kindly  household 
folk  around  us,  who  will  not  haggle  over  some  nicety  of 
their  duties,  but  deem  a  friendly  smile  and  a  kind  word  a 
good  human  equivalent.  Should  John  the  gardener  be  called 
upon,  in  some  crush  of  events,  to  clean  the  knives,  he  would 
never  dream  of  saying  that  he  is  not  paid  for  cleaning  them. 
He  is  gentleman  enough  to  understand  that  a  courtesy  is 
asked  of  him,  and  he  does  it  with  a  smiling  heart;  and  he 
knows  that,  if  some  day  he  should  need  a  courtesy  in  return, 
it  is  his  before  he  asks  it.  Similarly,  nurse,  whose  stipulated 
duties  cease  at  the  nursery  door,  is  only  too  glad  to  lend 
cook  a  hand  in  the  kitchen,  particularly  when  such  excite- 
ments as  Christmas  festivities  are  going  forward.  Even  I, 
myself,  who  am  not  paid  for  any  such  arduous  work,  do  not 
mind  leaving  the  mysterious  pen-and-ink  duties  in  the  study, 
so  that  nurse  may  help  cook  in  the  kitchen.  Perhaps  deep 
in  my  heart  I  may  be  really  glad  to  escape  from  my  desk  to  my 
children — though,  if  you  know  anything  of  children,  you  will 
know  that  they  are  about  the  hardest  work  in  the  world,  and  I 
make  no  pretence  to  being  an  expert  infantile  entertainer. 

Joyce  is  a  little  girl  of  eight.  There  is,  therefore,  nothing 
to  tell  her  about  Christmas.  She  already  clearly  remembers 
six  Christmas  trees,  and  can  tell  you,  with  reliable  par- 
ticularity, the  various  shining  fruits  that  hung  on  each.  But 
Freya  is  not  yet  quite  two,  and  this  is,  practically,  her  first 
Christmas.  Yet,  strangely  enough,  she  seems  to  know  all 
about  it.  So  wonderful  is  the  power  of  certain  words— spell- 
words,  one  might  call  them — that  even  a  baby  is  immediately 
impressed  with  their  significance.  The  word  Christmas  is 
already  so  real  a  thing  for  little  Freya  that  her  tiny  spirit  is 
in  as  great  a  state  of  expectant  commotion  as  though,  some 


AN   OLD   COUNTRY    HOUSE 

twenty  years  hence,  you  had  whispered  in  her  ear  the  word 
"trousseau"!  Already,  though  not  yet  two,  the  human  being 
craves  excitement.  Christmas  is  to  be  Freya's  first  excite- 
ment. Already  a  word  which,  of  course,  she  cannot  pro- 
nounce means  romance  to  her  and  the  blowing  of  trumpets 
and  the  waving  of  plumes.  Already  the  nursery  has  grown 
dull  to  her.  She  is  weary  of  its  daily  round.  If  only  she 
could  walk  better,  she  would  run  away.  Already  the  world 
is  growing  stereotyped,  and  she  welcomes  Christmas  as  a 
bright  break  in  the  monotony  of  existence. 

She  doesn't  really  appreciate  poetry  as  yet,  but  Joyce  has 
not  spared  her  many  nursery  rhymes  on  that  account,  to 
which  Freya  has  listened  with  a  rather  alarmed  respect. 
Here  is  one  that  Joyce  is  fond  of,  and  of  which  Freya  can 
say  some  three  and  a  half  words: 

"O  the  big  red  sun 

And  the  wide  white  world, 
And  the  nursery  window 
Mother-of-pearled ; 

"  And  the  houses  all 
In  hoods  of  snow, 
And  the  mince-pies, 
And  the  mistletoe; 

"And  Christmas  pudding, 
And  berries  red, 
And  stockings  hung 
At  the  foot  of  the  bed; 

"And  carol-singers, 

And  nothing  but  play — 
O  baby,  this  is 
Christmas  Day!" 
156 


PERDITA'S   CHRISTMAS 

Well,  at  last,  on  the  afternoon  of  Christmas  Eve  Perdita 
threw  herself  into  a  chair  with  a  tired  sigh,  and  audibly 
thanked  Heaven  that  her  arrangements  for  Christmas  were 
completed.  She  had  worked  so  hard,  dear  thing;  and  I 
couldn't  help  wondering  why — for  1  confess  that  I  am  neither 
young  enough  nor  old  enough  really  to  enjoy  Christmas. 
Christmas  was  made  for  grandmothers  and  grandchildren: 
those  who  are  happy  because  they  are  beginning  life,  and 
those  who  are  happy  because  they  are  so  soon  to  end  it. 
Those  "in  the  midway  of  our  mortal  life"  Christmas  is  apt 
to  inspire  with  a  melancholy  peculiar  to  itself,  a  melancholy 
which  young  laughter  rather  deepens  than  dispels.  But  such 
reflections  are,  I  know,  unworthy  of  the  season,  and  as  the 
snow-laden  twilight  darkens  the  windows  nurse  comes  in 
with  Joyce  and  Freya,  who  are  to  help  light  the  Christmas 
candles  which  are  to  shine  a  welcome  out  across  the  green 
to  Auntie  Tess  and  Uncle  Jake,  who  are  expected  from  town 
in  time  for  dinner.  At  the  very  thought  of  Auntie  Tess  and 
Uncle  Jake  the  children's  eyes  grow  bright,  for  Auntie  Tess 
means  chocolates,  and  Uncle  Jake  can  play  any  game  or  pull 
any  face  you  can  think  of,  and  there  is  no  animal  whose 
voice  he  cannot  imitate.  Grown-ups  are  particularly  in- 
terested in  his  imitations  of  extinct  animals;  but  Joyce  and 
Freya,  childlike,  prefer  his  impersonation  of  cows  and 
barn-yard  fowls.  They  simply  adore  him  when  he  imitates 
a  pig,  as  I  confess  that  I  do,  too.  If  Uncle  Jake  is  a  melan- 
choly man — as  I  have  heard  whispered— he  contrives  to  con- 
ceal his  melancholy  beneath  a  mask  of  infectious  laughter 
which  the  saddest  soul  finds  it  impossible  to  resist. 

Christmas  trains  are  always  allowed  to  be  late,  and  the 
candles  had  burned  quite  an  inch  when  at  length  we  heard 

137 


AN   OLD   COUNTRY    HOUSE 

the  crunching  of  wheels  on  the  snow,  and  saw  the  kind 
lamps  of  the  carriage  coming  across  the  green.  Then  we 
threw  open  the  wide  door  that  they  might  have  a  golden 
carpet  of  welcome  across  the  snow,  and  from  the  carriage 
came  a  view-halloo  in  fine  style,  and  Joyce  cried  "Uncle 
Jake!"  as  loud  as  she  could,  and  Freya  tried  to  imitate  her, 
and  Perdita  took  a  last  quick  glance  at  the  decorations  in 
the  hall,  and  then  we  heard  John  running  over  the  cobbles 
in  the  stable-yard  to  open  the  carriage  door  and  help  with 
the  luggage.  John's  "Good -evening,  sir;  a  merry  Christ- 
mas!" as  Uncle  Jake  stepped  from  the  carriage,  had  some- 
thing good  and  kind  in  it  that  makes  it  worth  while  for  the 
human  heart  to  go  on  beating,  and  you  may  be  sure  that 
Uncle  Jake  knew  how  to  respond  to  such  a  welcome.  John 
and  he  were  no  strangers.  Uncle  Jake  was  too  good  judge 
of  a  terrier  not  to  have  won  John's  heart  long  ago. 

At  an  unseen  signal  from  Perdita  a  great  horn  of  mulled 
wine,  warm  as  a  winter  fire  and  subtly  spiced,  had  been 
carried  in  by  a  waiting-maid  dressed  so  prettily  in  an  Eliza- 
bethan frock  that  I  had  some  difficulty  in  recognizing  our 
little  country  Martha.  When  Auntie  less  and  Uncle  Jake 
had  been  duly  comforted  by  this  grateful  beverage,  and  the 
loneliness  of  an  hour  or  two's  travel  warmed  out  of  them, 
Perdita  made  another  signal,  whereupon  a  feudal  retainer 
dressed  in  Lincoln  green,  but  still,  I  surmised,  one  of  the 
many  transformations  of  our  honest  John,  stepped  into  the 
hall,  and,  doffing  a  hat  decorated  with  hawk's  feathers,  raised 
a  cow's  horn  to  his  lips  and  blew  a  merry  blast.  He  blew 
it  three  times,  and  I  never  heard  a  cow's  horn  blown  better. 
As  the  third  blast  died  away,  from  the  little  gallery  at  the 
far  end  of  the  hall  there  began  quite  a  pretty  music,  a  little 

1*8 


PERDITA'S   CHRISTMAS 

timorous  at  first,  but  soon  gaining  courage;  and  presently 
there  came  from  the  kitchen  quarter  quite  a  populace  of 
heartily  sung  words  to  match  it.  While  the  song  was  still 
singing  one  of  the  great  doors  of  the  hall  was  thrown  open 
and  a  dozen  stout  lads,  clad  in  green — a  la  John— appeared, 
harnessed  to  a  mighty  log,  on  which  was  perched  the  best 
singer  in  the  village  choir,  a  graceful  lad  whom  I  knew  still 
better  as  a  skilful  wicket-keeper.  Having  been  drawn  in 
upon  the  log,  in  spirited  style,  he  vacated  his  throne,  and, 
doffing  his  hat,  rendered  Herrick's  old  song  in  a  way  that 
made  me  whisper  to  Perdita  that  there  was  something  to  be 
done  with  the  English  peasantry  after  all : 

"Come  bring,   with  a  noise, 
My  merry,   merrie  boys, 

The  Christmas  Log  to  the  firing; 
While  my  good  Dame  she 
Bids  ye  all  be  free, 

And  drink  to  your  heart's  desiring.  .  .  ." 

You  may  be  sure  the  noise  was  not  lacking,  and  when  the 
lads  had  dragged  the  log  on  to  the  hearth,  and  it  was  already 
beginning  to  crackle,  Perdita  was  not  forgetful  of  a  further 
important  feature  of  the  ceremony,  and  I  heard  her  warn 
Martha  to  be  careful  that,  should  we  stay  too  long  over  din- 
ner, the  whole  log  should  not  be  burned,  but  a  brand  of  it 
preserved  to  light  the  yule-log  next  year. 

We  had  hardly  sat  down  to  dinner,  however,  when  new 
strains  of  music  interrupted  us,  like  angels  lost  in  the  snow 
and  gently  pleading  for  admittance.  It  was  the  carol-singers 
telling  of  good  King  Wenceslaus,  and  how,  so  many  years  ago, 

*39 


AN   OLD    COUNTRY   HOUSE 

as  shepherds  watched  their  flocks  by  night — this  very  night, 
nearly  two  thousand  years  ago — the  Angel  of  the  Lord  came 
down,  and  brightness  shone  around.  The  familiar  tears  came 
into  our  eyes  as  we  listened,  and  we  ran  to  the  door  to  wel- 
come the  great-coated,  snow-shod  singers. 

When  the  singers  had  been  duly  refreshed  to  their  taste 
and  content,  and  Joyce  and  Freya  had  gone  to  sleep  dream- 
ing of  little  stockings  bursting  like  cornucopias  with  precious 
eatables,  we  old  folk  returned  to  our  interrupted  meal,  and 
talked  of  those  we  loved  who  were  coming  on  the  morrow, 
and  perhaps  even  more  of  those  who  could  never  come 
again.  And  then,  remembering  how  busy  the  coming  day 
was  to  be  for  Perdita,  we  bade  each  other  quite  an  early 
good-night  and  the  old  house  fell  quiet.  The  embers  of  the 
log -fire  in  the  hall  opened  a  drowsy  eye  occasionally,  like 
a  sleeping  hound;  the  frost  tightened  its  white  grip  on 
the  world  outside,  till  you  could  hear  it  creak  with  pain; 
and  the  windows  were  being  stealthily  overlaid  with  ghostly 
flowers. 

The  morning  sun  rose  jolly  and  red  as  only  the  sun  can 
rise  on  Christmas  Day,  but  he  had  been  up  none  too  long 
when  there  came  a  knocking  at  the  door  and  more  singing. 
Perdita  was  already  dressed,  but  I  confess  I  had  been  hoping 
for  another  half-hour  in  bed,  as  it  was  yet  barely  seven. 

"  Was  this  really  necessary,  Perdita?"  I  asked. 

"Come  and  look  through  the  window/'  she  replied,  "and 
don't  be  so  lazy." 

1  looked,  and  had  to  confess  it  was  a  pretty  fancy;  for  six 
village  lads,  dressed  like  foresters,  stood  with  branches  of 
mistletoe  in  their  hands,  and  as  they  beat  upon  the  door  with 
the  mistletoe  they  sang,  "Yule,  Yule,  Yule,"  skilfully  intoned 

140 


PERDITA'S   CHRISTMAS 

with  many  variations,  of  which  I  surmised  Perdita  had  got 
the  hint  from  one  of  those  old  books  of  airs  which  she  was 
fond  of  studying  and  trying  over  on  her  harpsichord. 

"  Now  listen  again,"  she  said, "  or,  if  you  don't  want  to  hear 
your  own  miserable  carol,  go  back  to  bed  again  and  draw 
the  sheets  over  your  ears." 

Was  there  ever  a  more  flattering  inducement  to  early  rising? 
Of  course  I  stood  and  listened.  It  sounded  well  in  that  crystal- 
line morning  air,  I  must  confess;  but  as  I  fear  it  would  not 
sound  so  well  in  print,  1  spare  the  reader  a  copy  of  it  here. 

"It  was  dear  of  you,  Perdita,"  I  said,  "but  I  wish  we  had 
kept  to  'Christians,  awake,  salute  the  happy  morn';  for  asso- 
ciation is  three-quarters  of  the  battle  in  such  songs,  and  bad 
old  poetry  that  has  been  loved  for  centuries  by  good  old 
people  is  better  for  such  purposes  than  good  new  poetry  by 
the  cleverest  of  young  persons." 

A  moment  or  two  later  we  heard  a  laughing  chatter  com- 
ing along  the  corridor  to  our  room,  and  suddenly  the  door 
was  thrown  open  by  two  happy  fairies  in  tiny  morning 
wrappers,  and  holding  in  their  hands  stockings  bursting 
with  treasures.  Oh,  the  treasures!  Oh,  the  happy  little  girls! 
What  a  wonderful  world!  We  covered  the  bed  with  them, 
wondering  how  they  possibly  could  have  come  and  who 
could  have  sent  them.  "  Father  Christmas,  of  course,"  said 
Joyce;  and  Freya,  who  always  deferred  to  her  elder  sister's 
knowledge  of  the  world,  agreed  that  it  could  be  no  one  else. 

"Well,  I  really  believe  it  was  Father  Christmas,"  said 
Perdita,  "and  if  you  are  very  good  little  girls  perhaps  he 
will  come  and  give  away  the  presents  from  the  Christmas 
tree  this  afternoon" — for  poor  Perdita  had  a  children's  party 
on  her  hands  as  well  as  the  other  pleasure-business  of  the  day. 

141 


AN   OLD   COUNTRY   HOUSE 

Uncle  Jake  has  impersonated  Father  Christmas  now  for 
some  years,  and,  when  the  time  for  gathering  the  Christmas 
fruit  had  come,  I  wish  you  could  have  seen  him  among  the 
children.  Still  a  child,  in  spite  of  his  thirty  years,  how  well 
he  understood  instinctively  just  what  would  make  them 
laugh  or  take  their  fancy.  Well  might  the  children  go  away 
with  the  firm  conviction  that  they  had  indeed  seen  Father 
Christmas!  To  doubt  so  veritable  a  Father  Christmas  would 
have  been  a  form  of  infantile  atheism  worthy  of  ostracism 
in  every  kindergarten.     Dear  Uncle  Jake! 

Now  I  think  I  can  safely  leave  you  to  imagine  the  rest  of 
the  day.  Perdita  contrived  to  give  it  many  little  touches  of 
originality,  but,  had  she  been  too  original,  it  would  hardly 
have  been  an  old-fashioned  Christmas  Day.  Yet  there  are 
one  or  two  particulars  worth  naming  in  regard  to  the  dinner 
and  the  dance.  The  first  is  the  spirited  manner  in  which 
Uncle  Jake,  disguised  as  a  huntsman,  carried  in  the  boar's 
head,  and  the  way  in  which  he  gave  the  old  song — 

"The  Bore's  Heade  in  hande  bring 
With  garlandes  gay  and  rosemary, 
I  pray  you  all  synge  merely, 
Qui  estis  in  convivio." 

But  a  still  greater  sensation  was  the  mammoth  pie  which 
it  took  two  strong  lads  to  carry  in.  Perdita  had  found  the 
recipe  in  an  old  book,  and,  having  somewhat  reduced  the 
proportions  of  the  ingredients,  had  built  up  her  pie  as  fol- 
lows: one  bushel  of  flour,  ten  pounds  of  butter,  two  geese, 
one  turkey,  one  rabbit,  two  wild  ducks,  one  woodcock,  three 
snipes,  two  partridges,  one  neat's  tongue,  one  curlew,  four 

142 


PERDITA'S   CHRISTMAS 

blackbirds,  and  three  pigeons.  The  pie  was  a  good  six  feet 
round,  and  weighed  about  ninety  pounds.  It  was  set  in  a 
case,  underneath  which  were  four  wheels  by  which  it  could 
be  the  more  easily  passed  along  the  table — the  which,  as 
you  can  imagine,  caused  great  merriment.  When  we  had 
done  with  it,  it  was  wheeled  round  the  village  in  triumph, 
stopping  at  cottage  doors  till  it  was  finally  consumed. 

The  dance  was  the  gayest  thing  in  the  world,  but  I  know 
it  was  somewhat  of  a  disappointment  to  Perdita,  for,  though 
she  had  coached  some  of  our  young  neighbors  in  several 
pretty  old  dances,  the  majority  of  her  guests  found  them- 
selves awkward  in  the  old  measures ;' and  I  regret  to  say 
that  very  soon  her  old  Christmas  dance  had  degenerated 
into  an  orgy  of  the  modern  waltz  and  Washington  Post. 
Yet,  as  I  explained  afterwards  to  Perdita,  you  cannot  expect 
young  people  to  be  pedantic  over  their  pleasures,  and  they 
naturally  prefer  to  be  young  in  the  latest  fashion.  When 
youth  is  dancing  with  a  pretty  girl  it  doesn't  want  to  have 
to  pay  too  much  attention  to  the  steps  of  the  dance. 

And  certainly,  for  the  most  part,  Perdita  had  every  reason 
to  be  satisfied  with  the  success  of  her  Christmas -card 
Christmas.  Every  one  and  everything  had  worked  together 
to  assist  her  in  her  enterprise,  and  particularly  the  weather, 
which  was  the  severest  known  in  our  parts  for  many 
winters.  We  felt  quite  proud  of  the  snowdrifts  that  all  but 
overtopped  the  gate-posts  of  our  Old  Manor,  and  we  forgave 
the  frost  its  painful  tricks  with  our  water-pipes  for  the  sake 
of  the  beautiful  arabesques  on  our  windows.  When  we 
came  down  to  breakfast  we  felt  quite  a  personal  gratifi- 
cation in  saying  that  we  had  found  the  water  frozen  in  our 
jugs.    Why  is  human  nature  as  boyishly  pleased  with  such 

143 


AN   OLD   COUNTRY   HOUSE 

things  as  though  it  had  made  them  itself  ?  And  is  there 
anything  that  makes  the  soul  of  man  so  happy  as  some 
masterful  display  of  the  elements — fire  in  its  splendor,  or 
water  in  its  might,  or  the  wind  in  its  wrath,  or  the  drowsy 
snow,  so  thick,  so  gentle,  so  irresistible? 

Well,  the  guests  are  gone;  their  laughing  good-byes  have 
died  away  with  the  sound  of  their  carriage-wheels,  like  far, 
aerial  music;  the  fires  once  more  burn  low;  we  have  had 
our  last  nightcap  together,  and  the  snow  is  making  an  eery 
noise  against  the  old  windows.  It  is  time  to  go  to  our 
Elizabethan  beds.  Good-night!  Let  us  hope  Martha  has  not 
forgotten  the  hot-water  bottles. 


THE  END 


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